The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid

In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioners Song, this haunting, insightful, and surprisingly intimate portrait of Saddam Hussein provides a brief, but powerful, meditation on the meaning of evil and power (USA TODAY).The captivating (Military Times) The Prisoner in His Palace invites us to take a journey with twelve young American soldiers in the summer of 2006. Shortly after being deployed to Iraq, they learn their assignment: guarding Saddam Hussein in the months before his execution.Living alongside, and caring for, their high value detainee and regularly transporting him to his raucous trial, many of the men begin questioning some of their most basic assumptionsabout the judicial process, Saddams character, and the morality of modern war. Although the young soldiers increasingly intimate conversations with the oncefeared dictator never lead them to doubt his responsibility for unspeakable crimes, the men do discover surprising new layers to his psyche that run counter to the medias portrayal of him.Woven from firsthand accounts provided by many of the American guards, government officials, interrogators, scholars, spies, lawyers, family members, and victims, The Prisoner in His Palace shows two Saddams coexisting in one person: the defiant tyrant who uses torture and murder as tools, and a shrewd but contemplative prisoner who exhibits surprising affection, dignity, and courage in the face of looming death.In this thoughtprovoking narrative, Saddam, known as the man without a conscience, gets many of those around him to examine theirs. A singular study exhibiting both military duty and human compassion (Kirkus Reviews), The Prisoner in His Palace grants us a behindthescenes look at history thats nearly impossible to put downa mesmerizing glimpse into the final moments of a brutal tyrants life (BookPage).