Copeland: What is the best international affairs book of 2011?

By:
Daryl Copeland
/
7 December, 2011
By: Daryl Copeland

Former diplomat; research fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute

It was not a banner year for Canadian books of this sort, but I very much liked US State Department veteran Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. 

Insightful, disturbing, and at times darkly funny, I was constantly reminded of Robert Fisks’s poignant observation that it seems the only thing we ever learn is that we never learn…

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