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