Writers in Residence
The
CNAS Writers in Residence program provides some of America’s top national
security and defense journalists the opportunity to complete longer book
projects while benefiting from the full spectrum of the Center’s resources and
expertise.
Current Writer in Residence David Finkel is the author of The Good Soldiers, a ground-level
account of the U.S. "surge" into the Iraq war, published in 2009 by
Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. CNAS is hosting Finkel as he
writes a second book that chronicles the return of the battalion’s soldiers
after the end of their tour, exploring their struggles to reintegrate – what
Finkel calls their “trip back to normalcy.” An editor and writer for The Washington Post, Finkel has
reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe and across the United
States, and was part of the Post’s war
coverage in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. He won a Pulitzer Prize for
Explanatory Reporting in 2006 and was the recipient of the prestigious
MacArthur Fellow “genius” award in 2012.
CNAS is also currently hosting Yochi Dreazen, a contributing editor to The Atlantic while he works on his book about the psychological wounds of war and how the military handles depression and PTSD through the lens of a single military family.
Recent Writers in Residence include:
- Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post, author of Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, published in June 2012 by Knopf.
- Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, both of The New York Times co-authored Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, which was published in 2011 by Henry Holt and Company.
- Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post and David Cloud of the Los Angeles Times, co-authored The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army, which was released in October 2009 by Random House.
- Tom Ricks, formerly with The Washington Post and currently a CNAS Senior Fellow wrote The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, which was published by Penguin Press in 2009.
- David Sanger of The New York Times wrote The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, which was published in early 2008 by Random House.
