American Warlord

by Johnny Dwyer

The incredible true story of Chucky Taylor, the only American ever convicted of torture.  

Chucky Taylor was an average American teenager, until he got a call from his father, a man who would become the infamous dictator of Liberia. Arriving in West Africa and reunited with his father, Chucky soon found himself leading a murderous militia group tasked with carrying out the president’s vendettas. Young and drunk on power, and with no real training beyond watching action films, Chucky spiraled into a binge of drugs, violence, and women, committing crimes that stunned even his father. A work of astonishing journalism, American Warlord is the true story of those dark years in Liberia, cutting right to the bone of humanity’s terrifying and unknowable capacity for cruelty to show just how easily a soul can be lost amid the chaos of war. 

• ISBN10: 0385353030
• ISBN13: 9780385353038
• Publish Date: 1 January 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 3 June 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[jnkay01]

Chucky Taylor's 2008 trial in Miami federal court was a sort of homecoming for a young man whose adolescence in Florida had been like so many others bored with the suburbs and longing for absent fathers.

The surreal journey Taylor took from Florida to Liberia and then back to stand trial for torture is the subject of "American Warlord." Through public records requests, trial transcripts, interviews in the U.S. and Liberia and letters from Taylor himself, journalist Johnny Dwyer tried to piece together what happened to Taylor that made him such a unique catch for U.S. authorities.

Read my complete AP review here: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/15e10f1570384279aec5883f0e2d78b5/american-warlord-follows-chucky-taylor-us-liberia#