A review by jaclynday
Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone by Scott Shane

4.0

I gave myself a new challenge. I want to start reading at least one nonfiction book per month (or so) about a topic I know nothing, or very little, about. After I listened to a Fresh Air interview about this book, I thought it seemed like a good way to get the ball rolling. This book was fascinating–exhaustively researched and meticulously reported by Shane, who covers terrorism for The New York Times. The content is dense and full of foreign policy nuance that I am, admittedly, not well-versed in, but that’s why I read it. It’s two books in one really: the first about how an American citizen can become radicalized, and the second about the rise of drone warfare in the past decade and the moral balancing act that this new weaponry demands of those who use it. Shane made the multi-layered, murky content as clear as you could hope for–the book was so well-organized, I was never confused about what was happening, when it was happening, or who we were supposed to be following. It sounds obvious, but I’ve a lot of nonfiction that neglects the reader. A loose story structure may still contain interesting facts, but you can’t see the forest for the trees. Luckily, none of that happens here. Shane writes powerfully and candidly, not letting us forget the bigger themes at stake. He closes the book with a nod to the rise of ISIS and leaves the reader, uncomfortably, with that final thought.