Steve Coll

The seemingly endless war in Afghanistan is both a recurrent headline and a perpetual mystery: the longer America's shadowy conflict with the Taliban drags out, the less we understand about who and why we're fighting.  Fortunately for us, journalist and author Steve Coll's deep reporting – which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for his 2004 book Ghost Wars – brings readers vital understanding about this monumental but mysterious struggle.  He joined us in the studio to talk about his bestselling new book Directorate S: The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016, and what its revelations tell us about a war we usually glimpse only in fragments.

Om Podcasten

We're no longer producing new episodes of this show, but you can find us now at Poured Over on Apple Podcasts. Every author has a story beyond the one that they put down on paper. The Barnes & Noble Podcast goes between the lines with today's most interesting writers, exploring what inspires them, what confounds them, and what they were thinking when they wrote the books we’re talking about.