A Novel

2054

‘Don’t venture into the future without having read this book’ ANDREW ROBERTS 
 
It is twenty years on from the nuclear war between the US and China that brought down the old world order, and the American president has held power for over a decade. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. A cover-up ensues, the administration announces his death and the country descends into civil war. 
 
Everything points to a remote assassination made possible by a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this world transforming breakthrough. As the world’s great powers struggle to outmanoeuvre one another in this Great Game of scientific discovery, an American crisis threatens to spiral into a global one. 
 
2054 is an explosive thriller and a real-world cautionary tale about the path we are on, from two former military officers and award-winning authors who have seen the future. 
 
‘A compelling, terrifying and totally plausible thriller of future world history and calamity’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 
 
‘This kind of fiction can induce a kind of sublime awe at the complexity of the global networks in which we’re enmeshed’ HARI KUNZRU, THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
‘A satisfying combination of two very different things: “chilling vision of things to come” and “page-turning beach read”’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

This kind of fiction can induce a kind of sublime awe at the complexity of the global networks in which we’re enmeshed . . . 2034 and 2054 are near-future tales, extrapolating from the present to a carefully imagined next five minutes, designed to elicit a little spark of recognition, the feeling of being shown a possible path from “here” to a utopian or dystopian “there”

This book tells us more about the present than the future, it does so with dry wit, and offers philosophical insights into our relationship with technology . . . a satisfying combination of two very different things: “chilling vision of things to come” and “page-turning beach-read”

As well as being a pacy, gripping page-turner of a thriller, 2054 has the advantage of being written by two men who have seen the future, and have thought profoundly about it. It would make a sensational sci-fi movie, with powerful modern-day overtones. Don’t venture into the future without having read this book

2054 is a compelling, terrifying and totally plausible thriller of future world history and calamity – not so far away – crafted into a sophisticated geopolitical narrative superbly handled by this unique partnership of retired admiral/NATO supremo, and a prize-winning literary writer of beautiful novels who also happens to be a decorated Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excellent – and a worthy sequel of their thriller 2034

Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History

In 2054, the US President dies unexpectedly, the ‘Dreamers’ and ‘Truthers’ are at odds across America and a second Civil War beckons. A terrifying glimpse into the near future

Another top-shelf thriller about near-future geopolitical turmoil . . . Ackerman and Stavridis paint a sweeping and resonant portrait of a world faced with a powerful technological advancement it doesn’t fully understand. The results are genuinely chilling

Gripping and imaginative . . . an enjoyable techno-thriller that explores the chaotic, self-destructive potential of human ingenuity

An enjoyable, intelligent and ultimately frighteningly plausible version of a future

A Novel of the Next World War

2034

A chilling geopolitical thriller and real-world cautionary tale presenting a dark yet very possible future of war between the US and China &ndash; from two former military officers and award-winning authors 
 
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER &bull; &lsquo;A rippingly good read&rsquo; Wired 
______________ 
 
12 March 2034. 
 
In the South China Sea, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is conducting routine freedom of navigation patrol while US Marine aviator Major Chris &lsquo;Wedge&rsquo; Mitchell tests a new stealth technology near Iranian airspace. 
 
By the end of the day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Hunt&rsquo;s destroyer will lie at the bottom of the ocean. 
 
And a new, terrifying era will be at hand. 
 
So begins a disturbingly plausible novel, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral. 
 
Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground, informed by the authors&rsquo; years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Because sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings. 
 
&lsquo;I could not stop reading 2034&rsquo; Phil Klay, author of Redeployment 
 
2054: A NOVEL IS OUT NOW

This kind of fiction can induce a kind of sublime awe at the complexity of the global networks in which we&rsquo;re enmeshed . . . 2034 and 2054 are near-future tales, extrapolating from the present to a carefully imagined next five minutes, designed to elicit a little spark of recognition, the feeling of being shown a possible path from &ldquo;here&rdquo; to a utopian or dystopian &ldquo;there&rdquo;

If you&rsquo;re looking for a compelling beach read this summer, I recommend the novel 2034

This crisply written and well-paced book reads like an all-caps warning for a world shackled to the machines we carry in our pockets and place on our laps, while only vaguely understanding how the information stored in and shared by those devices can be exploited.

Consider this another vaccine against disaster. Fortunately, this dose won't cause a temporary fever&mdash;and it happens to be a rippingly good read. Turns out that even cautionary tales can be exciting, when the future we&rsquo;re most excited about is the one where they never come true

There is conflict and catastrophe on a large scale, and it unfolds, as major conflicts tend to, with surprising twists and turns . . . This is not a pessimistic book about America&rsquo;s potential, but the picture of the world it paints before the central conflict will be a difficult one for many to accept, albeit one well supported by facts

I could not stop reading 2034. With sharply drawn, vibrant characters caught in an all too plausible future conflict, the novel left me fascinated, moved, thrilled and, ultimately, haunted

An unnerving and fascinating tale of a future . . . The book serves as a cautionary tale to our leaders and national security officials, while also speaking to a modern truth about arrogance and our lack of strategic foresight . . . The novel is an enjoyable and swiftly paced but important read

Utterly engrossing . . . [2034] is incredibly well-written, deeply thought-provoking, and it makes for uncomfortable and sober reading&mdash;in the best of ways...Elliot Ackerman is one of the finest writers to come out of this generation of military veterans and officers

A frightening look at how a major-power showdown might race out of control. . . . This compelling thriller should be required reading for our national leaders and translated into Mandarin

Those seeking a realistic look at how a future world war might play out will be rewarded

Chilling yet compulsively readable work of speculative fiction . . . Ackerman and Stavridis have created a brilliantly executed geopolitical tale that is impossible to put down and that serves as a dire, all-too-plausible warning that recent events could have catastrophic consequences

War with China is the most dangerous scenario facing us and the world. Absent a strategic method to manage our differences, Jim Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman&rsquo;s chilling novel presents a realistic series of miscalculations leading to the worst consequences. A sobering, cautionary tale for our time

Jim Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (Ret.) and 26th Secretary of Defense

A brilliant thriller! Masterfully plotted and elegantly written, 2034 is a literary tour-de-force. Let&rsquo;s just hope none of it comes true

Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Near Dark

A real page-turner, 2034 is a novel about a conflict we hope never happens. Drawing on their deep operational and diplomatic backgrounds, Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman have conjured a nightmare we desperately need to avoid. The novel is a cautionary tale for our times, and a reminder how quickly events can spin out of control&mdash;even before 2034

Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense 2006-2011

2034 is an exciting, interesting, and informative novel about a hypothetical future war with China that is largely determined by actual decisions already made...Anyone who is concerned about where today&rsquo;s military technology decisions are taking us should read this book

Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn and Deep River

Elliot Ackerman (Author) 
ELLIOT ACKERMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Halcyon, 2034, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoir The Fifth Act: America&rsquo;s End in Afghanistan, and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and Marine veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. He divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C. 
 
James Stavridis (Author) 
Admiral Jim Stavridis, USN (Ret.), spent more than thirty years in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of four-star admiral. He was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and previously commanded U.S. Southern Command, over-seeing military operations throughout Latin America. At sea, he commanded a Navy destroyer, a destroyer squadron, and an aircraft carrier battle group in combat. He holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he recently served five years as dean. He received fifty medals in the course of his military career, including twenty-eight from foreign nations. He is the author of ten other books, including Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World&rsquo;s Oceans and Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character, and is Chief International Analyst for NBC News and a contributing editor of Time magazine. He is currently the vice chair, global affairs, and managing director of the Carlyle Group and the chair of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation.

On War, Revolution and Returning

Places and Names

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ARMY MILITARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020 
 
'A superb, unique, and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat' Simon Sebag Montefiore 
 
'One of the most profound books I have ever read about the real nature of war and the abstract allure of the ideas and the bloodshed that fuels it' Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall of Baghdad 
 
An astonishing account of the nature of war from acclaimed novelist and decorated former US marine Elliot Ackerman 
 
In a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and has murky connections to the Islamic State. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that in fact he was a Marine. The two men then compare their fighting experiences in the Middle East, discovering they had shadowed each other for some time: a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy. 
 
Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir explores the events that led him to come to this refugee camp and what, unable to forget his time in battle, he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent time on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure, one which blends the American experience with the perspectives and stories of the Arab world, and draws a line between them. 
 
At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for the region and the world, Places and Names bids to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.

Elliot Ackerman's exceptional memoir is really a double memoir of his own experiences as a Marine and those of a Jihadist fighter he befriends in a refugee camp. The result is a superb, unique and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat.

Elliot Ackerman's voice scares me. It's a bit too close for comfort. He sees too much and he knows too much, and that makes him a great guide to today's post-everything Middle East. Read him at your own risk - but ignore this book at your own peril.

Thomas E. Ricks, author of ‘Making the Corps,’ ‘Fiasco,’ and ‘Churchill and Orwell'

Rare is the writer who can illuminate either the experience of the individual or the larger context of the times in which we live. Elliot Ackerman manages to do both. He is as adept at describing the strange cocktail of emotions that accompany the moments preceding combat as he is unraveling the Gordian Knot of contemporary geopolitics. That he does so in the graceful, lucid prose fans of his fiction have come to admire is even more remarkable. Places and Names is an extraordinarily beautiful and insightful work of memoir and journalism by a writer who deserves to be read widely.

How often does one encounter a novel as perfectly shaped, as fresh, as subtle and as explosive as this? I couldn't turn away from Elliot Ackerman's latest taut wonder, and when I got to the final page, I wanted to start all over again, in the light of the haunting last words. Patiently, and unflinchingly, Ackerman is becoming one of the great poet laureates of America's tragic adventurism across the globe.

When I finished Elliot Ackerman's Places and Names my copy was covered with bracketed paragraphs and underlined phrases. There is no surer indicator of a book filled with insight and good writing. Ackerman's honest searching to come to terms with his war experience helped me better understand my own. This book is a gift that should be shared with every American who helped pay for people like Ackerman to fight their wars for them.

Karl Marlantes, prize-winning author of Matterhorn and Deep River

Places and Names is its own profile in courage: the story of how a Marine turned reporter struggled with the polemics of desolation in the Middle East. Elliot Ackerman is a man of both action and thought, and his book is closely observed, rigorously lived, and clarifying for all of us who have not understood how U.S. policy in the Islamic world went so terribly wrong.

Andrew Solomon, author of 'Far and Away', 'Far From the Tree', and 'The Noonday Demon'

In Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman, a soldier turned writer, seeks out his former foes and confronts his own memories on battlefields where the killing continues. The result is one of the most profound books I have ever read about the real nature of war and the abstract allure of the ideas and the bloodshed that fuels it.

Places and Names is a brilliant and gripping account of the aftermath of failed wars and revolutions, and of the still burning idealism that smolders in the wreckage. Elliot Ackerman brings a novelist's skill with language, a reporter's eye for detail, and his life experience as a highly decorated Marine veteran of five deployments to bear in this unique and powerful meditation on violence, heroism, and the fracturing of the Middle East."

Phil Klay, National Book Award winning author of ‘Redeployment’

What a great, honest book-the kind that makes one feel lucky to have in one's hands. Ackerman has served his country twice: first as an infantryman in our nations wars, and then as a guide-wise beyond his years-who helps us understand what we've done. His prose is easy and comfortable like an old jacket. His understanding of war is so profound that one feels like secrets have been revealed-truths-information that one day may be necessary for our survival. Well done.

Elliot Ackerman fought the Long War, and now, with Places and Names, he gives us a searingly honest record of his ongoing effort to make sense of the war. This is, literally, a book of wanderings; Ackerman's sojourns to conflict zones, old battlefields, and muddy refugee camps recall the wanderings of that earlier soldier, Odysseus, as he struggles to come home from war, and, no less than his predecessor, Ackerman finds himself journeying through the shadow world of ghosts and spirits that go by the name of memory. Vivid, profound, restless, and relentlessly probing, Places and Names is destined to become a classic of the Long War.

Ben Fountain, author of 'Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk'

Ackerman brings a fiction writer's touch to his reportage. The soldier-scribe is a familiar figure in British narratives of the region, from TE Lawrence to Rory Stewart. Ackerman fits easily into this tradition ... The book shows what it is like to be in the middle of it all - particularly for a young, open-minded and quietly idealistic American.

It is a rare writer who is not afraid to deal with the toughest conflicts, ask the hardest questions, show the darkest side of even heroes, and still manage to renew our faith in humanity.

Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul

Elliot Ackerman was a young Marine Corps officer during the battle of Fallujah in 2004. I was an embedded journalist with his unit, which lost 20 men in the first week of fighting. I remember him as clever, direct and sometimes playfully ironic, all qualities on display in his book about what he has seen of war, Places and Names. His account of how he won a Silver Star is gripping, the chaotic reality on the ground contrasting with the po-faced and supremely uninformative official citation. His descriptions of Syria, which he visited as a writer, were so painfully evocative for me that I had to stop reading for a time. His vivid, sparse prose bears comparison to that of Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried or Norman Lewis in Naples '44; Places and Names has the same clear-eyed view of what war is.

Beautiful writing about combat and humanity and what it means to 'win' a war.

Green on Blue is harrowing, brutal, and utterly absorbing. With spare prose, Ackerman has spun a morally complex tale of revenge, loyalty, and brotherly love ... a disturbing glimpse into one of the world's most troubled regions.

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner

This novel as a whole attests to Mr. Ackerman's breadth of understanding - an understanding not just of the seasonal rhythms of war in Afghanistan and the harsh, unforgiving beauty of that land, not just of the hardships of being a soldier there, but a bone-deep understanding of the toll that a seemingly endless war has taken on ordinary Afghans who have known no other reality for decades.

Elliot Ackerman has done something brave as a writer and even braver as a soldier: He has touched, for real, the culture and soul of his enemy

Tom Bissell, (The New York Times Book Review)

ELLIOT ACKERMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Halcyon, 2034, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoir The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and Marine veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. He divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.

In a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and has murky connections to the Islamic State. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that he was a Marine. The two men then compare their fighting experiences in the Middle East, discovering they had shadowed each other for some time: a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy. 
 
 Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir explores the events that led him to come to this refugee camp, and what he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent time on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure, one which blends the American experience with the perspectives and stories of the Arab world. 
 
 At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for the region and the world, Places and Names bids to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.

Elliot Ackerman

You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlandish characters. But as with Joseph Heller and Thomas Pynchon, Elliot Ackerman (a veteran of conventional and special operations in Afghanistan and Iraq) combines black comedy with satire

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure. But if the novel has its fair share of tropes, Ackerman is also determined to unravel a few of them, to expose how corrupting a world full of crumbling democracies can be . . . Sheepdogs thrives in exposing the moral uncertainty of this new world order

Akerman has been reflective, elegiac, often ruefully nostalgic, at times quietly angry, always sternly principled, and analytical to the point of prophetic . . . Sheepdogs is a gear shift into deceptively rip-roaring caper mode

Lean but globe-trotting, it’s both funny and deadly earnest. Where lots of military thrillers lean on gruff brutality, this instead lends something like the castoff perspective of Slow Horses to the chaotic pessimism of David O Russell’s film, Three Kings

A plane heist goes outrageously awry . . . lively . . . moving . . . Though his tone is light, Ackerman regularly reminds the reader of the lifelong shadow war casts on the men who fight

Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian—these characters are totally addictive. I couldn’t put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride

Sheepdogs is the best thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished. Here’s hoping this isn’t the last we’ll hear of Skwerl, Cheese and the rest of Ackerman’s unforgettable band of misfits. It’s an absolute gem of a novel

A gripping CIA crime novel already on the fast track to TV – you really don't want to miss this one

Pacy, witty, full of great characters, unexpected twists and insider insights about what it’s like to serve in the special forces, this novel has everything. Bring on the TV!

Andrew Roberts, author of Leadership in War

This fast-paced book, at once engrossing and insightful, sweeps the reader into military and post-military life, explains how baroque operations work and what can happen when they go awry. It’s a rollicking adventure story populated with compellingly real characters, a brilliantly constructed thriller that describes both physical escapades and psychological drama

Two ex-servicemen have a chance to make a cool million and get out of their professional ruts . . . What could go wrong? A lot, it turns out

The brilliant Sheepdogs by Elliot Ackerman shatters paradigms and moves the genre forward with two unique and quirky heroes named Skwerl and Cheese who will endear themselves to you from the first page to the last. Do yourself a favor and dive into the action with these post war-on-terror repo men as they take you on a thrill ride you will not soon forget. Move Sheepdogs to the top of your list!

Jack Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Sky Mourning

Raw and real and beautifully told, Sheepdogs isn’t just a page-turner, it’s a mind-bender. Elliot Ackerman takes the reader into the CIA’s most secret space—the paramilitary ‘special activities’ of its Ground Branch. It’s a helluva read, a heist chase melded with a spy novel—think Ocean’s Eleven meets James Bond. And it builds toward one of the best surprise endings I’ve read in a long while. Read it before it gets classified!

Elliot Ackerman

Praise for Sheepdogs

**You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper** . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

**You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper** . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

**You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper** . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

Books by Elliot Ackerman

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Praise for Sheepdogs

You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling

An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones

Books by Elliot Ackerman

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

**You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper** . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

**You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper** . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...

**You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . A glorious globetrotting caper** . . . Sheepdogs is primarily a hilarious heist thriller, rich in double-crossings , farcical cockups and outlan ...