Summit Notebook
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After a hard day’s work in Afghanistan, Petraeus reads… about Afghanistan
After spending 16-plus hours each day running the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, American General David Petraeus tries to thumb through a few pages of a book each night before his eyes close and it falls to the ground. The most recent topic? Afghanistan of course.
The four-star general told Reuters that currently on his nightstand is a book by a leading expert on the country: Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: a Cultural and Political History, a book ranked 21,047 on Amazon.com (as this blog was being published).
The general, speaking in a telephone interview as part of the Reuters Washington Summit, acknowledged that he probably only gets through a few pages each night.
“When you start at working at 5:30 in the morning, and I mean really start working, and you go down somewhere around 2200-2300 (10 p.m.-11 p.m.), you don’t get more than a couple of pages into whatever book you read before it falls on the floor,” he said.
