Hugh Pope

I first met Tony Horwitz when he was a Wall Street Journal correspondent, determined to see every inch of every border with Iraq to test a theory about sanctions against that country during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. We spent a week bumping up and down mountain roads along the Iraq-Turkey border together, and I helped him talk to every Kurd and practically every donkey that we came across. I really enjoyed his book Baghdad without a Map, which describes some of his adventures in those days. Horwitz has of course become a best-selling author since then – like his wife, former Journal correspondent Geraldine Brooks – and many thanks to him for taking the time to endorse Dining with al-Qaeda:

“Hugh Pope goes behind the headlines to probe the world’s most volatile and misunderstood region. Balanced, deeply informed, and darkly fun, Dining with al-Qaeda is a must-read for Middle East junkies.”

Tony Horwitz, author of A Voyage Long and Strange and Baghdad Without a Map