Generation's End: A Personal Memoir of American Power After 9/11 - Rilegato

"In this original and affecting account of New York after the September 11 attacks, Scott L. Malcomson draws us back to a time of extraordinary clarity and exceptional confusion about America's sense of itself and its place in the world. By doing so, he helps to make sense of where we were and where we have now arrived. This is a cathartic and honest work."---Stere Coll, author of Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens and president of the New America Foundation

"With the intelligence and decency of a cosmopolitan who also loves his country, Scott L. Malcomson helps us to understand both the local human consequences and the global political significance of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad two years later. Generation's End is a deeply human reflection on his own responses, as a husband and father, a friend and a colleague, a journalist and an editor, and as an American and a citizen of the world."---Kirame Authony Appiab, author of The Honor Code and Cosmopolitanism and president of PEN American Center

"Generation's End returns us to a harrowing period in all its confusion and loss, but this time we have a guide. Malcomson's brave investigations lead us to a new, keen understanding of how the early years after 9/11 still shape our world today."---Colson Whitehead, author of The Colossus of New York

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we have a chance to see more clearly how they were a turning point in America's relationship with the world. America became more assertive abroad; its authority and legitimacy as the only superpower became more widely opposed: and the limitations of the U.S.-dominated post-World War II international structures became more evident with each passing year.

The first half of Generation's End examines the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks through the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As the foreign affairs Op-Ed editor for the New York Times during this period, Scott L. Malcomson witnessed the newspaper's struggles to deal with the threats to its city and to American security. He captures the confusion and bravery of those times with disarming honesty while also providing insight into the shaping of American (and Times) Policy.

The latter half takes Malcomson to Geneva, where in early 2003 he became senior adviser to the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello. When Vieira de Mello was selected as the UN's special representative for Iraq, Malcomson counseled him closely, writing strategy memos, speeches, and Op-Eds (including politically sensitive material revealed here for the first time). The killing of Vieira de Mello by al Qaeda in Baghdad, movingly evoked here by Malcomson, brings a measure of closure to a very brief but critical two years that, as George Packer notes in his foreword, "contain all the decisions that would set in motion the larger era." In an epilogue, Malcomson positions the Obama administration in the context of this formative period.