Last Card

Timothy Andrews Sayle is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto.Jeffrey A. Engel is Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of What Good is Grand Strategy?William Inboden is Executive Director and William Powers, Jr., Chair of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.

• Introduction: The American Occupation of Iraq by 2006 and the Search for a New Strategy1. America's War in Iraq: 2003–20052. This Strategy Is Not Working: January–June 20063. Together Forward? June–August 20064. Silos and Stovepipes: September–October 20065. Setting the Stage: Early November 20066. A Sweeping Internal Review: Mid–Late November 20067. Choosing to Surge: December 20068. What Kind of Surge? Late December 2006–January 20079. How the "Surge" Came to Be10. Iraq, Vietnam, and the Meaningof Victory11. Decisions and Politics12. Blood, Treasure, and Time: Strategy-Making for the Surge13. Strategy and the Surge14. Civil-Military Relations and the 2006 Iraq Surge15. The Bush Administration's Decision to Surge in Iraq: A Long and Winding Road16. The President as Policy Entrepreneur: George W. Bush and the 2006 Iraq Strategy Review

This is a fascinating contribution to the history of the war.(Foreign Affairs) An expertly researched and written oral and narrative history, The Last Card examines the excruciatingly complex process of American decision making in the run-up to the 2007 surge against al Qaeda in Iraq... This precious narrative history shows the complexities of war planning and is a most welcome addition to modern American war studies, though it is best intended for advanced readers.(Choice) It is essential to learn the right lessons from the Iraq War, and The Last Card is an important first step in what one hopes will be a much longer journey of discovery.(Survival) The Last Card is an excellent resource for scholars. It provides important and authoritative insights into one of the seminal events in American history.(The US Army War College Quarterly) The Last Card makes an invaluable contribution to the emerging literature on the subsequent course of the war, bringing scholars and policy-makers together to explore how and why the surge came to be.(International Affairs) The Last Card is unique in that the book looks to make primary and secondary contributions simultaneously. Without a doubt, the work adds to narratives regarding the Bush administration and its handling of the war in Iraq. It provides insight on a thematically complex subject, offering immediate value to scholars in several fields.(Presidential Studies Quarterly) This oral history of the decision for "the surge" in Iraq in 2007 provides a valuable resource for scholars trying to grapple with the larger course of the Iraq War. The Last Card is an exemplary effort by this team of scholars to consider this event as history, and o a fantastic resource for teachers who want to assign interviews or essays à la carte to help their students wrestle with the surge's origins and impact.(H-Net)