The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria
Written by Janine di Giovanni
Narrated by Teri Schnaubelt
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Doing for Syria what Imperial Life in the Emerald City did for the war in Iraq, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawing from years of experience covering Syria for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the front pages of the New York Times, award-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni gives us a tour de force of war reportage, all told through the perspective of ordinary people-among them a doctor, a nun, a musician, and a student. What emerges is an extraordinary picture of the devastating human consequences of armed conflict, one that charts an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war zone. Recalling celebrated works by Ryszard Kapu#347;ci#324;ski, Philip Gourevitch, and Anne Applebaum, The Morning They Came for Us, through its unflinching account of a nation on the brink of disintegration, becomes an unforgettable testament to resilience in the face of nihilistic human debasement.
Janine di Giovanni
Janine di Giovanni has reported on war for 25 years. She has written seven books, including the critically acclaimed Madness Visible, The Place at the End of the World, and, most recently, a biography of the Magnum Photographer Eve Arnold. She is the Middle East Editor of Newsweek, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Granta and Harper's among many others. A frequent foreign policy analyst on British, American and French television, she has won many awards including Granada Television's Foreign Correspondent of the Year Award, the National Magazine Award, two Amnesty International Media Awards, and the Spear's Memoir of the Year Award for Ghosts by Daylight. She is a Fred Pakis scholar in International Affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has served as the president of the jury of the Prix Bayeux for war reporters and is a media leader at the World Economic Forum, Davos. She lives in Paris with her son. www.janinedigiovanni.com @janinedigi
Related to The Morning They Came For Us
Related audiobooks
Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crisis of Zionism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Empire and the Five Kings: America's Abdication and the Fate of the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5From Beirut to Jerusalem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My War Gone By, I Miss It So Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Good Men Among the Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World War II: A New History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Wars & Military For You
The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kill Anything That Moves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Strategy Masters: The Prince, The Art of War, and The Gallic Wars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diary of Anne Frank Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Watchmaker's Daughter: The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unbroken Bonds of Battle: A Modern Warriors Book of Heroism, Patriotism, and Friendship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin - Book Summary: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead And Win Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agincourt 1415: Field of Blood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Code Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rape of Nanking: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Palestine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Morning They Came For Us
39 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A short and brutal montage of first-person accounts about life in Syria from both sides by a brave journalist who traveled there, mostly during 2012-2014. She interviews torture victims, rape victims, soldiers, civilians, bakers, doctors, etc.. It mostly predates Russian intervention so it's out of date with current events, but it's not a history of war rather the words of those she interviews carries great impact.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War correspondents have one of the hardest jobs - go where the bombs and bullets are flying and report about all the misery and pain. And Jeanine Di Giovanni is one of the veterans in that. I've never read a book by her before although I know that I had seen a few of her articles. She had been everywhere - and that gives her a unique perspective at the first year of the Syrian war. And she uses it to write this book - and show that things do not change. Way too often when she describes a situation she compares it to what happened in Bosnia. Or in Iraq. It is heartbreaking to see the same mistakes happening again - and realizing that people are people no matter where - evil and good exist in every war, in every country. The book is a mix between personal stories and official reports. It makes it a bit repetitive in the first part of the story - but then the style settles and gets very readable. The horrors and the misery and the hopelessness leak from every page - people are tortured sometimes without a reason, sometimes for what they believe. There is no winner in that first year of the war - the author ends up riding both with the Assad forces and with the Free Army - seeing the conflict from both sides. But she does not just report the war itself - she reports the lives of the ones that are the most vulnerable - the children, the women, the people that cannot defend themselves. In a culture where being a virgin is the only way to have a future, the men, the same men that will require virginity from their brides, are raping, ensuring that they are destroying lives even when they are not killing. It is a hard book to read - a lot of the torture descriptions are graphical and you can hear the voices behind them. So are the stories of ruined lives and deaths - both of locals and of other journalists. It is not a book you want to read and yet it is a book that needs to be read. Because humanity is doomed to repeat the same mistakes until everyone realizes that this cannot continue.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This author is a war correspondent who writes about her experiences during the recent Syrian conflict. She describes how during the Arab Spring events in the Middle East people in Syria gathered to start a peaceful revolution that quickly changed into a civil war with no end in sight. The author looks at this situation from the perspective of the different parties involved, but the bottom line is that there are no winners here. It is a wonderfully insightful look at this tragic situation.