Stern’s book shows how precision-guided bombs have shaped warfare in the modern age.

Inspired by encounters with people whose lives have been upended by American bombing campaigns, Stern—author of 2023’s The Mercenary: A Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War—delves into the development of precision-guided bombs. His research reveals how the evolution of bombs has shaped American foreign policy and determined how and where America goes to war. Tasked with developing a weapon to aid pilots in destroying bridges in Vietnam, Texas Instruments engineer Weldon Word led the team that created the first Paveway, a laser-guided bomb equipped with one of TI’s silicon semiconductor chips. TI’s investment in these chips would revolutionize personal computing and ensure steady funding for the development of future weapons, “building a virtuous cycle in which American schoolkids and office workers were, unbeknownst to them, helping to realize the dream of a perfect, affordable precision bomb.” After the Paveway’s success in Vietnam, Word spearheaded efforts to continue its improvement. The results were Paveways that could adjust direction and reorient themselves after deployment, leading to the “bunker busters” used in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Stern demonstrates how presidents reluctant to commit ground troops in combat have increasingly opted for the Paveway’s quick, pinpoint airstrikes, minimizing risks to American forces. But the stories Stern shares of those directly affected by the bombs reveal the long-term results of campaigns in Iraq, Libya, and the Balkans: societal collapse, displaced families, radicalized youth, and retributive violence. What makes Stern’s book particularly powerful is how he juxtaposes these narratives with those of the weapons engineers and politicians who, remaining at a comfortable distance from the carnage, fail to fully appreciate the complexities of any conflict and conflate success with the number of targets eliminated. The Air Force pilot whom Stern profiles deems the Paveway a weapon that’s “beginning to bend war planners to its will,” a chilling assessment at the heart of Stern’s thesis. This book should be required reading for all Americans.

An important and eye-opening examination of the U.S. military-industrial complex.

A journalist recounts a complicated but enduring friendship established during America’s “forever war.”

“He was a kid with bad habits and no money. Now he’s a kid with bad habits and a lot of money.” So writes Stern, the author of The 15:17 to Paris, of the man known variously as Alex or Aimal. The American and the Afghan are both, in a sense, on the make: Stern is looking for the big story that will make his name, while Alex seeks to grow rich, in part thanks to the Americans who flooded the country in 2001. A driver who “gave Westerners rides anywhere in [Kabul] with a reliable, English-speaking driver” for a flat fee of $7, Alex—“none of his customers ever asked how he ended up with a name they could say”—soon discovered that the path to wealth lay elsewhere. While plying a less legal and more dangerous trade, Alex continued to take Stern to see places and people that kept his byline alive. “With a lot of help from Alex and a little help from an industry at the exact right moment of its life/death cycle, I got to work,” writes the author, recounting how he delivered the requisite stories of terror, violence, and redemption, “inoculated against trauma.” Alex had a mysterious way of knowing when and where a Taliban attack was about to occur, and gradually, he became more comfortable among the foreigners—“and he knew why: in their eyes he was becoming more civilized.” Yet, as the Taliban gained strength and the foreigners lost their resolve, Alex’s world crumbled, forcing him to mount a roundabout exodus. This part of the story is overlong, but it shows how Alex successfully gamed the immigration systems of several nations, leading to relevant prosperity, if not wealth.

An affecting story of the human costs of a war doomed to fail because “it began without enough understanding.”

A personalized rendering of a decade’s toll of war on one vilified segment of the Afghan populace determined to change its destiny.

Journalist Stern, who helped launch Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women Initiative, zeroes in on the remarkable efforts of a particular Shia teacher, of the Hazara minority in Afghanistan, who bucked the violent anti-American, pro-Taliban sectarianism during the last decade and managed to establish a well-regarded school outside the country’s capital. The author creates a compelling narrative out of the life of Aziz, aka the Teacher, a former “holy warrior” radicalized when his people were exiled in the early 1990s to refugee camps in Pakistan, where he first started a school. After 9/11, Aziz and the Hazaras fought with the American-led invasion forces against the Taliban and established his school in Kabul, “the first private school in Afghanistan.” Called Marefat—meaning wisdom and enlightenment, among other things—the school grew in enrollment to a few thousand students, both girls and boys, and stuck boldly to an independent, “irreverent” teaching approach—i.e., free of clerical influence. In this intimate narrative, Stern takes up the stories of some of the key players in making the school a success—e.g., Najiba, “the Student,” an illiterate adult woman with several children who not only pushed for her children to attend the school, but resolved to learn to read herself for her own “liberation”; Michael Metrinko, “the American,” who volunteered with the Peace Corps in the Middle East and ended up helping Aziz find funding; and Ta Manna, “the Troublemaker,” a young Hazara student who had to unlearn the terrorist mentality in order to participate in the school. The author concludes with an account of the valiant but doomed attempt to elect an improbable leader, Ashraf Ghani, who, though a Pashtun (an enemy of the Hazaras), is committed to the people’s education.

Stern carefully and gingerly sifts through the changes wrought not only by the American presence, but, critically, by their withdrawal.