American Cipher

Matt Farwell is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, Playboy, and other publications. He was an Army infantryman for five years, including sixteen months in Afghanistan. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The explosive narrative of the life, captivity, and trial of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was abducted by the Taliban and whose story has served as a symbol for America's foundering war in Afghanistan

Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl left his platoon's base in eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of June 30, 2009. Since that day, easy answers to the many questions surrounding his case have proved elusive. American Cipher is the riveting and deeply sourced account of the nearly decade-old Bergdahl quagmire and its place in the larger conflict in Afghanistan. The book tells the parallel stories of a young man's halting coming of age and a nation stalled in an unwinnable war, revealing the fallout that ensued when the two collided. The book's beating heart is Bergdahl himself - an idealistic, misguided soldier onto whom a nation projected the political and emotional complications of service.

Based on years of exclusive reporting drawing on dozens of sources throughout the military, government, and Bergdahl's family, friends, and fellow soldiers, American Cipher is at once a meticulous investigation of government dysfunction and political posturing, a blistering commentary on America's presence in Afghanistan, and a heart-breaking story of a naive young man who thought he could fix the world and wound up the tool of forces far beyond his understanding.

A riveting journalistic account of Bowe Bergdahl's disastrous - and weirdly poignant - choice to walk off his military base in Afghanistan ... A spectacularly good book about an incredibly painful and important topic
Compelling ... In American Cipher the specific facts of Bergdahl's case are elevated to the allegorical, and this is where Farwell and Ames's storytelling really shines ... Farwell and Ames convincingly show that so many of the reasons we've been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 years - bureaucratic inertia, partisan dysfunction, domestic indifference - are the same reasons that, even when Bergdahl's captors eagerly hoped to broker his release, it took so long to recover him
Matt Farwell and Michael Ames have written a vitally important book. As an account of Bowe Bergdahl's captivity and eventual release, American Cipher is compelling. Yet it's the backstory that really matters: The crippling dysfunction that permeates the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, beginning in the combat zone and extending all the way back to Washington
This excellent book is a cautionary tale about what happens when a confused and misguided young soldier is sent off to fight for an equally confused and misguided foreign policy
Bowe Bergdahl's story should be required reading for all Americans, illuminating as it does so many aspects of an ill-conceived conflict. American Cipher shines a cold, clear light not just on an unending war, but also on the society that pays for it in countless ways. A fascinating book
Matt Farwell and Michael Ames brilliantly reconstruct Bowe Bergdahl's journey and provide a damning portrait of America's role in Afghanistan, revealing the larger truth of why the U.S. has failed and why the war means unending tragedy for the Afghan people. American Cipher is haunting and moving, a deeply human study of an inhuman conflict. It is one of the most important books I've read about the Afghan war


After his capture by Islamic terrorists, during five years of imprisonment at undisclosed locations across the border of Pakistan, every moment in Bowe Bergdahl's existence became fodder for controversy at an international level. The authors present compelling, convincing evidence that addresses each specific controversial element ... An unsettling and riveting book filled with the mysteries of human nature