The first authoritative history of American's longest war by one of the world's leading scholar-practitioners, this New York Times notable book of 2021 has now been updated to cover the final phase of the conflict. The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001 and ended in 2021, was the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. Drawing from a deep well of local knowledge and a rich array of primary sources, Malkasian moves through the war's multiple phases: the 2001 invasion and after; the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006; the Obama-era surge; the various resets in strategy that occurred from 2011 onward, culminating in the US exit from the war in 2021; and finally the calamitous ending. Today, the Taliban run the country, having achieved the victory they always thought inevitable. Although the al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden was killed and no major