500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars

Written by Kurt Eichenwald

Narrated by Holter Graham

Kurt Eichenwald—New York Times bestselling author of Conspiracy of Fools and The Informant—recounts the first 500 days after 9/11 in a comprehensive, fly on the wall, compelling page-turner as gripping as any thriller.

In 500 Days, master chronicler Kurt Eichenwald lays bare the harrowing decisions, deceptions, and delusions of the eighteen months that changed the world forever, as leaders raced to protect their citizens in the wake of 9/11.
     Eichenwald’s gripping, immediate style and true-to-life dialogue puts readers at the heart of these historic events, from the Oval Office to Number 10 Downing Street, from Guantanamo Bay to the depths of CIA headquarters, from the al Qaeda training camps to the torture chambers of Egypt and Syria. He reveals previously undisclosed information from the terror wars, including never-before-reported details about warrantless wiretapping, the anthrax attacks, and investigations and conflicts among Washington, D.C., and London.
     With his signature fast-paced narrative style, Eichenwald—whose book, The Informant, was called “one of the best nonfiction books of the decade” by The New York Times Book Review—exposes a world of secrets and lies that has remained hidden until now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Sep 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781442356122

Kurt Eichenwald

Kurt Eichenwald wrote for The New York Times for more than twenty years. A two-time winner of the George Polk Award for excellence in journalism, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and 2002. He is the author of three bestselling books, one of which, The Informant, was made into a major motion picture. He lives in Dallas with his wife and three children. Visit him online at KurtEichenwald.com.

Reviews for 500 Days

[Irene Budoff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I will basically read anything Kurt Eichenwald writes. He can take a topic and make it interesting, and in this case, he has a ready made story. Much has already been written about the lead up to 9/11, one of the best being Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower’, but this brings you the immediacy of the decisions, many that went sorely wrong following the attacks in September of 2001, and that led to consequences, some of which we still are dealing with today, including our 20 year engagement in Afghanistan and the break-up of Iraq. Highly recommend.

[Basem Salah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is so depressing to see how a super power managed to destroy a country based on lies. More depressing is, after truth is revealed, no one dare to do anything about it. Iraq is open for plunder forever.

[highlander6022 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book has an extraordinary amount of information in it, some of it expected, some not. The author claims he wanted to document all the events during the time period without making judgments, but this is not really possible unless he had recordings or written/approved “minutes” of meetings. So he could not and did not succeed in really doing that. In not all situations did he simply present the facts – sometimes there were added comments beyond the facts. As soon as he chose to accept hearsay about what someone said during a meeting, interrogation, conversation, etc., his presenting solely “the facts” became impossible. That is not to criticize what is in the book - but how he portrayed at the beginning what he was attempting to do. Even if he could corroborate what was said with two people, the exact wording or tone of the conversation is still not possible to present. That, of course, is what happens with writing about past history – so don’t try to just “present the facts”.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Much like Bob Woodward's accounts of the post-9/11 period, Eichenwald's book explores the actions taken by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the attacks, concentrating on the internal debates over interrogation techniques, extraordinary rendition, and detainee rights generally. It makes for riveting reading, and Eichenwald has worked hard to get a range of different perspectives into the text. That said, I caught enough small errors here to make me wonder what I didn't catch (Don Nickles represented Oklahoma in the Senate, not Nevada; Tom Daschle was not the Speaker of the House, &c.). Small things like that bug me and lead me to question the rest of the narrative. But overall a truly frightening account of what was being done in America's name as the "War on Terror" got underway.