The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein and the Twelve Americans Who Guarded Him

by Will Bardenwerper Narrated by Danny Campbell

Overview

In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioner's 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 assumptions-about the judicial process, Saddam's character, and the morality of modern war. Although the young soldiers' increasingly intimate conversations with the once-feared 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 media's 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 thought-provoking 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 behind-the-scenes look at history that's nearly impossible to put down...a mesmerizing glimpse into the final moments of a brutal tyrant's life” (BookPage).

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

This audio production explores the many layers of a historical figure who is considered thoroughly evil. The person in question is Saddam Hussein, the longtime Iraqi despot, as seen by the Super 12, the American military policemen assigned to guard him in the period leading up to his trial for war crimes in 2006. Narrator Danny Campbell convincingly voices the soldiers, who come off as mostly young and somewhat naïve. They learn there’s more to Saddam than his historical record. With slightly accented English, Campbell's Saddam is more than a murderous dictator. He is also a husband, father, sage, and patriot—a man doing what he thinks is best for his people. Having lived for months with Saddam, the Super 12, in their own words, tell how their feelings about him evolved. The result is a thought-provoking portrait of a complex man. D.E.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

Will Bardenwerper has succeeded in writing a book about the Iraq War from a wholly new perspective. This superb account of the twelve men assigned to guard Saddam Hussein forces us to acknowledge that there can be honor and courage on all sides in war. Absolutism is for people who’ve never been there.”
—Nathaniel Fick, author of the New York Times bestseller One Bullet Away

“Offers shocking insights into the banality of evil….an Alice-In-Wonderland tumble through Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s dark psyche. Will Bardenwerper vividly exhumes some of the tyrant’s twisted brutalities—all true—and yet reveals the gritty humanity of Saddam through the eyes of the young American soldiers assigned to guard him in the last months before he is hanged. A disturbing and entirely captivating piece of literary journalism.
—Kai Bird, coauthor of the Pulitzer-winning American Prometheus and author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames

“In war, the enemy is always the ‘the other.’ What makes The Prisoner in His Palace so captivating is how Bardenwerper brilliantly juxtaposes the brutal acts that Saddam Hussein perpetrated against his own people, with the dignified, and even tender, manner in which the Iraqi dictator interacted with his American guards. What the book reveals is that our common humanity turns ‘the enemy’ into someone quite unexpected.”
—Peter Bergen, New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad

“In the American imagination, Saddam Hussein functions as nothing more than a two-dimensional despot, a monster who terrorized and gassed and desecrated his own people. He was. He did. Will Bardenwerper's The Prisoner in his Palace reveals something else about Saddam, though, something less simple than that known caricature and certainly more troubling: he was a human being, a human like all of us, a human being with hopes and dreams and regrets that woke him in the dead of night. Saddam wrote poetry and longed for his family and treated the American soldiers tasked with guarding him during his trial with kindness and generosity of spirit. This is a brave and piercing book."
—Matt Gallagher, author of the novel Youngblood and Kaboom

"What an astonishing story. Through meticulous research and a keen eye for detail, Bardenwerper does the near impossible: convinces the reader to empathize with Saddam Hussein during his sad final days. The Prisoner in His Palace is a deeply human book, and though we all know the ending, I couldn't put it down."
—Brian Castner, author of The Long Walk and All the Ways We Kill and Die

"The Prisoner in His Palace finds humanity in a singularly inhuman figure, Saddam Hussein. Through meticulous reporting and beautiful storytelling, Will Bardenwerper has crafted a portrait that is both deeply moving and deeply disturbing. This book challenges the tired constructs of ‘good versus evil’ that have led us into so many ill-conceived wars."
—Elliot Ackerman, author of Green on Blue

“An astonishing, riveting story that brings the reader face to face with the specter of Saddam Hussein in captivity. As twelve young American guards spend their days in the same room with this brutal gangster-killer, a chilling, Shakespearean portrait emerges. Intriguingly, we meet a man who, while sometimes manipulative and petty, is also avuncular, joking, charming, wistful, and physically affectionate. There is even a scene of the Beast of Baghdad hugging an American soldier in a moment of tenderness. This is an unforgettable, essential read.”
—William Doyle, author of A Soldier's Dream: Captain Travis Partiquin and the Awakening of Iraq and PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy

“A moving and perception-altering book that exposes how wrong we are in so much of what we assume about war. In the fifteen years that America has been at war we’ve imprisoned, injured and killed thousands of foreign citizens. It’s time we got to know some of them. Will Bardenwerper introduces us to a name we know well, but a story about which we know little. Saddam Hussein’s execution was not just about the death of a tyrant. It’s about the Americans who were tasked with guarding him, interrogating him, and preparing him for his death. No matter the justification, there are long lingering consequences for all involved—often, terrible ones. But rather than shouldering and sharing those consequences as a nation, we’ve looked away and allowed too few to carry those burdens. Mr. Bardenwerper forces us to turn our gaze not only on those we have killed, but on those who were there to see the task done.”
—Eric Fair, Pushcart Prize-winning essayist and author of the memoir Consequence

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

This audio production explores the many layers of a historical figure who is considered thoroughly evil. The person in question is Saddam Hussein, the longtime Iraqi despot, as seen by the Super 12, the American military policemen assigned to guard him in the period leading up to his trial for war crimes in 2006. Narrator Danny Campbell convincingly voices the soldiers, who come off as mostly young and somewhat naïve. They learn there’s more to Saddam than his historical record. With slightly accented English, Campbell's Saddam is more than a murderous dictator. He is also a husband, father, sage, and patriot—a man doing what he thinks is best for his people. Having lived for months with Saddam, the Super 12, in their own words, tell how their feelings about him evolved. The result is a thought-provoking portrait of a complex man. D.E.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170625680
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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