Bestselling Author Thomas E. Ricks Joins CNAS as a Senior Fellow

WASHINGTON, DC, January 5, 2009 - The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is pleased to announce that bestselling author, Thomas E. Ricks, has joined CNAS as a Senior Fellow.  Concurrently with his duties at CNAS, he will write an online blog for ForeignPolicy.com called, "The Best Defense," serve as a contributing editor for Foreign Policy, and continue coverage as a special military correspondent for The Washington Post.
 
Prior to becoming a Senior Fellow, Ricks was affiliated with CNAS as a Senior Writer in Residence, at which time he completed his new book, The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-08, published on February 10, 2009 by The Penguin Press.  In The Gamble, Ricks documents the inside story of the Iraq war from 2006 through 2008. Using hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reporting, Ricks -- working in the tradition of his highly lauded Fiasco -- examines the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.
 
Born in Massachusetts in 1955, he grew up in New York and Afghanistan and graduated from Yale in 1977.  He is a member of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, the Society for Military History, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

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The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is an independent and nonpartisan research institution that develops strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense policies that promote and protect American interests and values. CNAS leads efforts to help inform and prepare the national security leaders of today and tomorrow.