Skip content
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch
Abridged
Curveball - Abridged by Bob Drogin
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Curveball - Abridged

Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War

$15.00

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Erik Singer
Length 6 hours 15 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

“A crucial study in the political manipulation of intelligence, understanding how Curveball got us into Iraq will arm us for the next round of lies coming out of Washington.”—Robert Baer, author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

Curveball answers the crucial question of the Iraq war: How and why was America’s intelligence so catastrophically wrong? In this dramatic and explosive book, award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin delivers a narrative that takes us to Europe, the Middle East, and deep inside the CIA to find the truth—the truth about the lies and self-deception that led us into a military and political nightmare.

Praise for Curveball

“Just when you thought the WMD debacle couldn’t get worse, here comes veteran Los Angeles Times national-security correspondent Drogin’s look at just who got the stories going in the first place. . . . Simultaneously sobering and infuriating—essential reading for those who follow the headlines.”Kirkus Reviews

“In this engrossing account, Los Angeles Times correspondent Drogin paints an intimate and revealing portrait of the workings and dysfunctions of the intelligence community.”Publishers Weekly

“An insightful and compelling account of one crucial component of the war's origins . . . Had Drogin merely pieced together Curveball's story, it alone would have made for a thrilling book. But he provides something more: a frightening glimpse at how easily we could make the same mistakes again. . . . The real value of Drogin's book is its meticulous demonstration that bureaucratic imperative often leads to self-delusion.”Washington Monthly

“Drogin delivers a startling account of this fateful intelligence snafu.”Booklist

“By the time you finish this book you will be shaking your head with wonder, or perhaps you will be shaking with anger, about the misadventures that preceded the misadventures in Iraq. This book is so powerful, it almost refutes its subtitle: The man called Curveball did not cause a war; he became a pretext—one among many.”—George F. Will 

Bob Drogin covers national security and intelligence for the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as a foreign correspondent for the Times in Asia and Africa, and as a national correspondent based in New York. He has won or shared multiple journalism awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the George Polk Award. He has been interviewed on Nightline, CNN, the BBC, PBS, NPR, and many other media outlets. He lives with his wife and two children outside Washington, D.C.

Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Reviews

“There used to be an old rule that real journalists lived by: ‘All governments are run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed.’ We've come a long way from those days, to a media that has been cowed into submission and accepting the ‘official story.’ Thank God for Bob Drogin and his refusal to believe. It's journalists like him and books like Curveball that give many of us a sliver of hope that we can turn things around”—Michael Moore, Director of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko

Curveball is the factual equivalent of Catch 22. It is impossible to read this book and then look at our world leaders without thinking, ‘F*ck. Oh f*ck. Oh my God, oh f*ck.’”—Mark Thomas, comedian and political activist

“Bob Drogin struck journalistic gold in this story of a conman who told his intelligence handlers exactly what they wanted to hear. If this twisted tale could be read simply as a thrilling farce it would be pure delight—but much more importantly, it is a history of our time.”—Philip Gourevitch

“The biggest fiasco in the history of secret intelligence over 500 years.”—Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day Of The JackalThe Odessa File, and The Afghan

“Bob Drogin is a brilliant reporter. In Curveball, he has produced a riveting and important investigation, full of startling and carefully documented detail, laying bare the anatomy of an intelligence failure and its contribution to a catastrophic war.”—Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

“Bob Drogin accomplishes what only the best reporters can; he forces you to wonder how he could possibly know that! If you want to know how the CIA could have possibly been so wrong about Iraq, here is a big part of the answer.”—Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down

“Here we go again: the self-deception, the corruption of intelligence, and the abuse of authority, amid a full cast of the usual suspects in the White House and the Pentagon. It's a crucially important story, and it comes wonderfully alive in Curveball. It would be almost fun to read if the message wasn't so important–and so devastating to the integrity of the American processes.”—Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Curveball is a true story, marvelously reported, about a descent into the netherworld of deceit and duplicity, where the lies of a single man in an interrogation cell in Germany grew like a malign spore in the dark. When it emerged, on the lips of the President and the Secretary of State, it infected the course of world events.”—Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action and The Lost Painting Expand reviews
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch