A solid, startling read on how the war on terror has changed the world - for the worse - and that in the end, everyone is to blame for what has happened since 9/11 and how the United States responded to it. Some of the more specific phraseology goes mentioned without definition, which can be irritating. Streatfeild does a good job of not inserting himself heavily into the narrative beyond the introduction and lets the eight stories speak for themselves. Looking forward to reading more works by him. ( )

This is a well researched book that does not focus on a clear history of the world since 9/11 but rather of eight stories that shows the effects of US foreign policy since the attacks on the world trade center. Through these 8 stories, Streatfeild shows how the war on terror has been horribly conducted and why AL-Qaeda is not losing momentum and still fighting the west. The written format for this book makes it feel as if the chapters were taken from different magazine articles, I felled I was reading an anthology rather than an original book. Overall a good read for people who when to learn more about foreign policy since 9/11.

What a painful book to read. One is catapulted from grief to anger to disbelief to fury to despair. I had to read the book slowly, a few pages a day; otherwise I would have found it too upsetting to bear. Dominic Streatfeild, a British investigative reporter, tells eight separate stories of tragic consequences of 9/11 – or rather of the xxxx response to 9/11 by the neocons of the Bush administration, and their compatriots. This is investigative reporting as it should be practiced. Each chapter of this book should have been a headline story in the op/ed pages of major newspapers in the US, the Times, Post, Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, LA Times.. Each chapter should have been cited by programs on major television news channels. Someone should commission Streatfeild as the Woodard and Bernstein of this era.

Kirkus Reviews provides a compelling synopsis of A History of the World since 9/11, the compendium of these eight investigative reports:

 According to Streatfeild , when the shock and confusion of 9/11 subsided, cynical American leaders seized an opportunity to rearrange the world more to their liking. Relying on erroneous assumptions and their own good intentions, abandoning democratic ideals and the rule of law, America and her allies crafted crude certainties and substituted them for the truth. The author features eight stories designed to show how they made the world decidedly less safe. He begins his parade of disasters with an account of the redneck loser in Texas, who, thinking himself an avenging patriot, shot and killed an immigrant Indian gas station attendant. More horrors followed. To help ensure its own reelection, the Australian government adopted an outrageous lie to demonize a boatload of refugees as terrorists. Believing they were striking Taliban forces, U.S. helicopter gunships strafed a wedding celebration in Afghanistan, killing 48 civilians. With too few soldiers to secure Iraq, the U.S. forces exposed the largest explosives plant in the Middle East to looting. Misidentifying an Egyptian traveler as a member of al-Qaeda, Macedonian border guards arrested the man and permitted the CIA to snatch him; he was subjected to months of incarceration and harsh interrogation before the agency acknowledged the mistake. America also overlooked Uzbekistan’s appalling human-rights record in return for access to a vital air base from which to launch strikes on Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the global polio-eradication campaign, tantalizingly close to solution, collapsed because of distrust for and rage against America. A tenacious reporter, Streatfeild packs the narrative with telling detail, instructive interviews and dramatic events . . . .

Here are just a few other brief excerpts from such synopses, gathered somewhat randomly:

• Dominic Streatfeild expertly combines history, biography and investigative journalism to show how a massacre on a clear September day in 2001 has touched the lives of millions of people around the world.

• . . . we see reason taking a back seat to atavistic impulses and also to simple confusion and paranoia. Streatfeild is grimly understanding of all this.

• Streatfeild shows how the sleep of reason and good sense in successive US administrations post-9/11 has brought forth the monsters of extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, extrajudicial execution and wholesale contravention of international law.

• Dominic Streatfeild has now hit the mother lode of seriousness with his new work… If anger is indeed an energy, this book should have you ready to run a marathon by the time you’ve reached the final page.

No, Streatfeild is not a scholarly historian. No, he is not an unbiased observer. But he is what we need – what was envisioned as “freedom of the press.”

Granted, the Kirkus review ends with a snippy grumble:

 . . . but he reaches conclusions too sweeping. Surely, for example, incidents of good-ol’-boy racism or Muslim paranoia cannot be wholly ascribed to the War on Terror, no matter how clumsily waged. ¶ Colorfully reported, not so carefully reasoned.
If a reviewer must register such a “sweeping” objection of its own, surely it should provide more evidence that the minor one they include. In the case, the murder to the gas station manager in Texas, Streatfeild would probably agree. But he does make the point, quite clearly and validly, that the Bushie rhetoric did much to create the atmosphere that incited the murder.

Of course, the book title – A History of THE World since 9/11 – is overstated. The subtitle is more appropriate (but, of course, less catchy): Disaster, Deception, and Destruction in the War on Terror. Curiously, Streatfeild himself has been quite candid about this:

 Julian, my agent, thought for a moment. ‘That’s a bloody good title’ he said. ¶ I disagreed. I thought it was a crap title. What on earth would the book be ABOUT? Where would I start? Clearly, a real history of the world would be impossible. A snappy title with no substance inside would surely be a waste of time? The whole thing sounded gimmicky.
Perhaps a more appropriate title, one almost as catchy, would have been Disaster, Deception, and Destruction in the Wake of 9/11.

What is important is that Streatfeild exposes the deception, and the rampant deceptive in governments, especially the US government in the Bush regime, is what is most infuriating, most grievous, most discouraging, and most painful of the revelations in the book.

If I could make a required reading list for all voters in federal elections, this one (with a better title) would be among my top ten. Yes, Kirkus, it is “colorfully reported”; and its reasoning is careful enough to require a genuine public response. ( )

I am pleasantly surprised.
I took a chance at winning this book so that I could blatantly and comprehensively trash it here. I am no fan of Mr. Streatfeild. I haven't read his [Cocaine: an Unauthorized Biography], but I have read [Brainwash: A Secret History of Mind Control]. Granted, it was written in the years after 9/11 when even the best of us succumbed to a form of blind patriotism and betrayed our better selves, but when in the closing chapters Streatfeild found compelling arguments in favor of torture in the "war against terror" I vowed to never again touch another word this man wrote.
Which brings us to.... this.
As many before me have pointed out, this does not at all set out to do what its title might infer. Instead we get "episodes," views into heretofore obscure stories of those whose lives have been damaged or destroyed by a foreign policy gone horribly, horribly wrong. This is the equivalent of eight incisive Harper's features shoehorned into a book. Which is not necessarily a bad thing...
Streatfeild's heart is in the right place here. He does not shirk from placing responsibility for these abominations where they belong: right here at home. For every flag we raised here after 9/11, a life or a liberty was taken elsewhere.
A disappointment for me was Streatfeild's naive conviction that 9/11 was the work of agencies not connected to the US Intelligence apparatus. Reconsideration along these lines would have made his main thesis even more convincing, and more devastating. ( )

I’m not sure Dominic Streatfeild’s “A History of the World Since 9/11” is appropriately titled. This is not so much a history of the world but a limited analysis of the Global War on Terror. Through eight vignettes, Streatfield tells us why the GWoT has failed despite the spending of $3 trillion and the loss of a million lives. Through these eight narratives we can find some reasons why we have failed in our objective – whether it is the ill-advised decision to invade Iraq or out support of president and dictator of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov. While Karimov’s bases were needed for our fight in Afghanistan, we did it with a wink and a nod over his barbarity in dealing with political opposition. We sanctioned (or worse) the torture, imprisonment, and murder of suspected terrorists throughout the world. So while not a complete history, Streafeild helps the reader understand why al-Qaeda and its extremism remains. The post 9.11 world could have turned out different. It is unfortunate that we made some of the decisions we did. ( )