Pakistan

"A reporter for The New Yorker, Ms. Weaver has spent much of the last two decades roaming the Islamic world, and her book shows the fruits of those journeys. Pakistan is a valuable and information-rich [portrait] of a poor and deeply divided country that, she says, could very well become the next of the world's failed states . . . Ms. Weaver's book is full of acute observation, telling detail, and clear insight. Given that Pakistan, as it faces its uncertain future, is going to become more important, not less, we can be thankful that Ms. Weaver has been paying attention."—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"Perceptive . . . Weaver has drawn on her superb skills as an evocative journalist to write a book that, by telling stories and describing scenes, gives a sense of Pakistani life that no amount of dry analysis could convey. She is literally a fireside storyteller . . . Those who are even remotely interested in Pakistan's coming crisis should read [this book]."—Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books

"Weaver's beautifully written reportage goes a long way toward explaining how Pakistan has emerged as the epicenter of terrorism and how Kashmir has become, as Clinton said in 2000, the 'most dangerous place in the world.' Pakistan is a brilliant portrait of a troubled country, vivid and frightening . . . Weaver brings to life the fragile and dangerous contradiction that is Pakistan, from the sandy vastness of Balochistan to the stark hills and dusty bazaars of the Northwest frontier. 'You're a Sindhi, a Baloch, a Punjabi, a Pathan. Pakistan's binding force has always been Islam,' Pakistan's late president Zia ul-Haq told her. 'Without it Pakistan would fall.'"—Nayan Chandha, director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, in The Washington Post

"Weaver tacks anecdotes from her travels to Pakistan together with her post-September 11 reflections on Osama bin Laden, his crowd, and American policy, so as to lightly sketch a country over-shadowed by 'jihad and Afghanistan.' Her book asks the big questions but it does not really try to address them; instead it contains stories based on her dispatches for The New Yorker of 'irascible chiefs' and Arab falconry, old news of Benazir Bhutto, and much conversation with retired generals and 'top' advisers."—Mahnaz Ispahani, The New Republic

"A lucid and compelling guide."—Richard Lacayo, Time

"Weaver focuses on the interplay between Pakistani politics and society . . . The debility of Pakistan's institutions and its failure to modernize politically is vividly portrayed . . . Her portrait of Pakistan provides carefully crafted glimpses of its many pathologies."—Sumit Ganguly, University of Texas at Austin, Foreign Affairs

"Drawing on 20 years of reporting excursions in Pakistan and Afghanistan for The New Yorker and other publications, Weaver leads us on an illuminating journey that spans lawless tribal territory and presidential palaces alike. What we see when we look through her lens is a Pakistan more deeply troubled, more closely tied to the Taliban, and more rife with anti-American sentiment than anyone would like to admit . . . Some of the information Weaver chooses in forming her narrative is perhaps common knowledge among people familiar with the region, but she fits the pieces together in a way that makes the greater puzzle far more thought-provoking and comprehensive."—Ilene R. Prusher, The Christian Science Monitor

"Fascinating and authoritative . . . More than a historian, Weaver is a great travel writer in the Graham Greene mode, with an eye for illustrative absurdities."—Michelle Goldberg, Salon

"Clear-eyed reporting and graceful prose in a highly readable—and sobering—work of political geography for policymakers and anyone concerned by the risks of an uncertain future . . . Weaver talks to fundamentalists and secularists alike, exploring the rifts that obtain among progressives and those who have nearly succeeded in turning Pakistan into a theocracy along the lines of Iran or Taliban-era Afghanistan, stymied only by a military dictatorship as corrupt as any in the world."—Kirkus Reviews

"Weaver's journalistic contact with Pakistan dates from 1982. She has interviewed two of Pakistan's recent leaders, Benazir Bhutto and General Pervez Musharraf, whose forceful personalities lend the book an immediacy and authenticity."—Library Journal

"'The accumulation of disorder in Pakistan is such that it could well be the next Yugoslavia,' writes New Yorker correspondent Weaver (Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam). She portrays a country mired in chaos and decay, speculating on whether Musharraf can win his war against the Islamic extremists and offering a portrait of a general she finds enigmatic. Weaver predicts disaster, not only for Pakistan but for the U.S., if he fails in his battle.—Publishers Weekly