Last Refuge

"The Last Refuge offers a valuable look at al-Qaeda's operational history in Yemen. Gregory Johnsen has done us all a service by explaining the country, the threats, and why we should pay attention." -- Ali H. Soufan, author of The Black Banner "Johnsen... has produced the first comprehensive history of the al Qaeda movement [in Yemen]: an engrossing account of the operations, personalities, and motivations that have caused the US such headaches." -- Publishers Weekly "Gregory Johnsen has written the best new book on al Qaeda in 2012 and the best book on Yemen in years... The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda and America's War in Arabia is a detailed narrative account of the development of [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula]. It is also a great read..." -- Bruce Riedel - Daily Beast "The Last Refuge is an authoritative and deftly written account of al-Qaeda's Yemeni incarnation. The book is dense with terrorist genealogies, but it also offers a lively portrait of the American government's stumbling efforts to understand and influence a profoundly alien culture. His account, starting in the 1980s, implicitly places Yemen near the center of the global jihadi movement; it may not be where al-Qaeda started, but it has always furnished many of the movement's foot soldiers, and it has now succeeded Afghanistan as the US government's most urgent concern about counterterrorism." -- Robert R. Worth - The New York Review of Books "Gripping and insightful." -- Booklist "Part modern history, part explanatory narrative... Johnson moves deftly between decades, continents and languages... The Last Refuge is a cogent insight into what the U.S. has done in the past twenty-five years-a bird's-eye-view on those successes and failures, in all their shades of horrid gray..." -- Haley Sweetland Edwards - The Washington Monthly "A wonderfully well written and deeply reported account of the only al-Qaeda affiliate that continues to pose a real threat to the West." -- Peter L. Bergen, author of Manhunt: The T "A break-through book on one of the most under-reported and misunderstood stories of the post 9-11 era. Penned in gripping prose and with incredible attention to detail, The Last Refuge unfolds with the pace of an action novel. But this story is all too true." -- Jeremy Scahill, author of the international bestse