Includes bibliographical references (pages 262-295) and index.

What do the Taliban, Liberian war criminal Charles Taylor, and the U.S. government have in common? They have all done business with the man who put the "blood" in blood diamonds--an immensely wealthy and powerful arms dealer who has flooded Africa and Southwest Asia with weapons of war. Here, two respected journalists tell the story of Viktor Bout, the Russian weapons supplier whose global network has changed the way modern warfare is fought. Bout's vast enterprise of guns, planes and money has fueled slaughter in Africa and aided both militant Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan and the American military in Iraq. As the Cold War ended, Bout emerged from a murky post-Soviet intelligence background and quietly amassed a fleet of Russian cargo planes, then began to forge an empire of lethal alliances across the Third World--a war machine able to deliver anything from AK-47s to attack helicopters, to anyone willing to pay.--From publisher description.