The enormity of the incompetence and insanity of the American occupation of Iraq is difficult to grasp, but Chandrasekaran gives us a pretty good picture of the 15 month misrule that was the Coalition Provisional Authority. The CPA started out small, without resources or personnel, and never improved, as short-timers selected primarily for their loyalty to the Bush Administration rather than any expertise in reconstruction or Iraq rotated through. There was just enough energy to implement yet another inane privatization scheme or meaningless law, but not enough to build civic institutions or repair the damage caused by decades of Saddam's neglect, the war, and looting. CPA staffers lived in an Americanized bubble, protected by 17 foot blast walls and armed guards, and almost never got out into the real Iraq.

Some people come off better than I expected. I always thought L. Paul Bremer was a "heckuva job, Brownie!"-style incompetent, but he was actually a legitimate diplomatic professional, albeit a micromanager with far too broad of a mandate, forced to push a delusional agenda, and without good coordination with the military. Chandasekaran points out the few successes where he finds them: Haliburton's excellent customer service for Green Zone workers; a successful science diplomacy effort by State/AAAS fellow Alex Dehgan; some of the crisis-management in public health and electrification by Stephen Browning, a US Army Corps of Engineers engineer who headed five ministries. Mostly though, the story is of economic shock therapy gone nuts: Privatizing Iraq's state owned industries in the blind faith that the Free Market would sort it out (the Free Market decided no deal was worth getting shot and declined to invest). A public health manager who focused on a new national pharmacy formulary and anti-smoking campaign when Iraq's trauma care was collapsing under the insurgency. The utter shambles of picking politicians, which exacerbated Iraq's sectional tensions. In almost every instance, mismanagement and incompetence carried the day, giving the insurgency vital space to develop.

Chandasekaran is an excellent reporter, which is part of why this book gets just four stars. There are a finely detailed moments, but they're disconnected from a broader theory of reconstruction or narrative arc (aside from 'bad to worse'). The Green Zone was a profoundly weird place, as the dozen or vignettes of daily life show, but Chandasekaran is too much of a professional to go full gonzo. I've heard it say that reporting is history's first draft, and this is a great first draft, but we're still waiting for the final edition.