Decade of Fear

"In her new book, A Decade of Fear, Shephard displays deep insight and an irrepressible sense of humor as she moves through the high and low points of America's transformation in the decade after 9/11." -- Harper's Magazine

One of Canada's leading journalists -- the national security reporter for the Toronto Star -- takes readers on a rollicking ten-year journey around the globe to uncover the tragic mistakes made in a post-9/11 world.

In the complicated world of terrorism and national security, issues are frequently reduced to sound bites or 500-word stories. But for a decade, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard, has travelled where others have not, witnessing the impact of Western foreign policies that all too often make the world a more dangerous place, rather than a safer one. The intrepid journalist's ten-year journey through terrorism's grey zone began on September 11, 2001, when as a young crime reporter she stood where the World Trade Center once towered, her arms coated with debris that still fell from the sky. Like everyone else, she asked, "Why?"

Shephard chased answers from Syria to Somalia, from the mountains of Pakistan and Yemen and into the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison. She had tea with men on the U.S. terrorism watch list (from Osama bin Laden's bodyguard [she was first person in world to get an interview with him], leadership of al Shabab and the young men behind the Toronto 18 plot], celebrated her 36th birthday in an Irish pub in Cuba's Gitmo, chewed the leafy narcotic qat in Yemen with high-level government and tribal leaders, and met a 17-year-old teenager in Mogadishu who broke her heart.

Including a chapter on the recent killing of al Qaeda's top man, Osama bin Laden, Decade of Fear is a sweeping non-fiction narrative, a journalist's journey, an analysis and indictment of all that went wrong since 9/11. It is also a look ahead at what could go right after 2011's "Arab Spring."