Thomas E. Ricks is the bestselling and award winning author of The Gamble, The Generals, and the international bestseller Fiasco, 'the most authoritative account of how the Bush administration and the US Army created a disaster in Iraq' (Max Hastings, Sunday Times). He is a former writer for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and has covered military operations across the globe. He now contributes to The New York Times and the New Yorker, and has appeared on the BBC, Sky News and in The Guardian and other UK press. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, writing the prize-winning blog The Best Defense.