Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Buy a book, help an Iraqi refugee

Here is one way to observe Memorial Day: Help Iraqi refugees as they settle down in this country. To do that, I’ve collected a bunch of recent books, signed by the authors, and am selling them off for $50 apiece. Send me a note telling me which books you want — the e-mail address is ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images
ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images
ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images

Here is one way to observe Memorial Day: Help Iraqi refugees as they settle down in this country. To do that, I've collected a bunch of recent books, signed by the authors, and am selling them off for $50 apiece. Send me a note telling me which books you want -- the e-mail address is over there on the right near my thumbnail bio. I will tell you if they are still available, and I also will tell you how to proceed. (Don't worry -- the checks won't be made out to me, and I will mail the books to you at my own expense.) Or, do all your Christmas shopping in one shot, and pre-emptively buy for all 11 signed books for $400.

Here is one way to observe Memorial Day: Help Iraqi refugees as they settle down in this country. To do that, I’ve collected a bunch of recent books, signed by the authors, and am selling them off for $50 apiece. Send me a note telling me which books you want — the e-mail address is over there on the right near my thumbnail bio. I will tell you if they are still available, and I also will tell you how to proceed. (Don’t worry — the checks won’t be made out to me, and I will mail the books to you at my own expense.) Or, do all your Christmas shopping in one shot, and pre-emptively buy for all 11 signed books for $400.

Here are the books:

David Bellavia: House to House

Andrew Exum: This Man’s Army

Nathaniel Fick: One Bullet Away

David Finkel: The Good Soldiers

Barton Gellman: Angler – The Cheney Vice Presidency

H.R. McMaster: Dereliction of Duty

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin: Game Change

Plus, all four of my books:

Fiasco

The Gamble

A Soldier’s Duty

Making the Corps

UPDATE: Wow. I didn’t realize what sort of demand there would be. All the books are sold, many times over. I am surprised at the number of people who offered to buy the whole set. I am e-mailing the winner right now. I will also sort out the rest of the purchase requests for individual books. I have lots of copies of my books, at least. Thanks to all who responded!   

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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