In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office. With a historian’s sweep and an insider’s eye for telling detail, Sanger delivers an urgent intelligence briefing on the world America faces. 

In the updated paperback version, he tells the back story of Obama’s decision to reveal the existence of a new, secret nuclear enrichment site under construction in Iran, the divisive debate within his own national security team over adding tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan, and the slow unraveling of Pakistan.  At a time of new terror threats—and a revived Al Qaeda—The Inheritance takes readers inside the Situation Room.  He explains how, with its attention riveted on managing a war gone bad in Iraq, the Bush administration became blinded to what was going in the rest of the world, leading to the dangerous developments that Obama was faced with on day one.

(Pub date: January 13, 2009/Paperback: January 12, 2010)

(A Documentary Film co-produced by The New York Times, The Discovery Times Channel and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

In this film, documentary director Julian Sher and New York Times reporters David E. Sanger and William J. Broad investigate the nuclear proliferation network operated by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, and how that network spread nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea and possibly to terrorist groups. Winner of The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award for excellence in broadcast journalism.