The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003by Steve Coll Penguin Random House, 2024, 556 pp, $65.00 Steve Coll, former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and a long-time staff writer for the New Yorker, is the author of a string of books, dating back to the late 1980s, on corporate America (The Deal of the Century, The Taking of Getty Oil) and on secret intelligence (Ghost Wars, Directorate S).