books tagged “iraq”

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  • Goldfarb, Michael: Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq
    Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying In The New Iraq
    by Michael Goldfarb
    ISBN 0786717742 (0-7867-1774-2)
    Softcover, Carroll & Graf Pub

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    Book summary:

    From public radio journalist Michael Goldfarb comes the most stirring narrative to emerge from the Second Gulf War, from the frontlines of battle, to the home of an Iraqi Kurdish family, and into the hearts of two men from different cultures whose friendship and passion for freedom will inspire all. Ahmads War, Ahmads Peace is Goldfarbs moving tribute to Ahmad Shawkat, the Iraqi Kurd who served as his translator during Major Combat Operations, whose lifes work was to promote freedom, and who was ultimately murdered during the American occupation. Goldfarb recounts his powerful relationship with Ahmad and introduces readers to the life of a true Iraqi hero.

    Eighteen years old when the Baath Party seized control of Iraq, Ahmad was imprisoned and tortured twice by Saddam Husseins regime, was forced to fight in the Iraqi army against Iran, and was banished from his hometown of Mosul for his anti-Saddam political writings. Just as he began to taste freedom with the fall of Saddam and his large familys return to Mosul, Ahmad was murdered for publicly decrying Islamic terror. As Goldfarb investigates his friend's murder, he mourns this loss and contemplates what dangers await the Iraqi people in their uncertain future.
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  • Roux, Georges: Ancient Iraq
    Ancient Iraq
    by Georges Roux
    ISBN 014012523X (0-14-012523-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Newly revised and containing information from recent excavations and discovered artifacts, Ancient Iraq covers the political, cultural, and socio-economic history from Mesopotamia days of prehistory to the Christian era.
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  • The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq
    by George Packer
    ISBN 0374530556 (0-374-53055-6)
    Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux

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    Book summary:

    As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war [in Iraq] by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia.

    How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess. We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war. --Alex Roslin [via]

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  • Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq
    by Riverbend, Ahdaf Soueif, James Ridgeway
    ISBN 1558614893 (1-55861-489-3)
    Softcover, Feminist Pr

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    Book summary:

    In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events.

    In a voice in turn eloquent, angry, reflective and darkly comic, Riverbend recounts stories of life in an occupied cityof neighbors whose homes are raided by US troops, whose relatives disappear into prisons and whose children are kidnapped by money-hungry militias. At times, the tragic blends into the absurd, as she tells of her family jumping out of bed to wash clothes and send e-mails in the middle of the night when the electricity is briefly restored, or of their quest to bury an elderly aunt when the mosques are all overbooked for wakes and the cemeteries are all full. The only Iraqi blogger writing from a womans perspective, she also describes a once-secular city where women are now afraid to leave their homes without head covering and a male escort.

    Interspersed with these vivid snapshots from daily life are Riverbends analyses of everything from the elusive workings of the Iraqi Governing Council to the torture in Abu Ghraib, from the coverage provided by American media and by Al-Jazeera to Bushs State of the Union speech. Here again, she focuses especially on the fate of women, whose rights and freedoms have fallen victim to rising fundamentalisms in a chaotic postwar society.

    With thousands of loyal readers worldwide, the Riverbend blog is widely recognized around the world as a crucial source of information not available through the mainstream media. The book version of this blog will have value-added features: an introduction and timeline of events by veteran journalist James Ridgeway, excerpts from Riverbends links and an epilogue by Riverbend herself.

    [via]

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  • Baghdad Without a Map: And Other Misadventures in Arabia
    by Tony Horwitz
    ISBN 0452267455 (0-452-26745-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Horwitz has the touch, the ability to astutely capture the ludicrous essence of an experience while filling in all the pertinent socio-historic details. He chews qat with the Yemenis, plays soccer with the Sudanese Dinka refugees and listens to an endless refrain of "You are the perfume of Iraq, oh Saddam" in Baghdad. Horwitz' eye and wit are equally sharp, and his book is an exceptionally good read. [via]

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  • Black, Edwin: Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-year History of War, Profit, And Conflict
    Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-year History of War, Profit, And Conflict
    by Edwin Black
    ISBN 0471773492 (0-471-77349-2)
    Softcover, John Wiley & Sons Inc

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  • Bush at War
    by Bob Woodward
    ISBN 0743244613 (0-7432-4461-3)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Bush at War focuses on the three months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, during which the U.S. prepared for war in Afghanistan, took steps toward a preemptive strike against Iraq, intensified homeland defense, and began a well-funded CIA covert war against terrorism around the world. The narrative is classic Woodward: using his inside access to the major players, he offers a nearly day-by-day account of the decision-making processes and power battles behind the headlines. Woodward's information is based on tape-recorded interviews of over a hundred sources (some unnamed), including four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, along with notes from cabinet meetings and access to some classified reports.

    Woodward's analysis of President Bush's leadership style is especially fascinating. A self-described "gut player" who relies heavily on instinct, Bush comes across as a man of action continually pressing his cabinet for concrete results. The revelation that the president developed and publicly stated the so-called Bush Doctrine--the policy that the U.S. would not only go after terrorists everywhere but also those governments or groups which harbor them--without first consulting Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is particularly telling. Other principals are examined with equal scrutiny. Though National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice emerges as soft-spoken and even tentative during group meetings, it becomes clear that Bush is dependent on her for candid advice as well as for conveying his thoughts to his cabinet. The relationship between Powell and Rumsfeld (and to a lesser degree Powell and Cheney) is often strained, exposing their differences regarding how to deal with Iraq and whether coalition building or unilateralism is most appropriate. Woodward also describes how CIA director George Tenet prepared a paramilitary team to infiltrate Afghanistan to set the groundwork for invasion, and how this ushered in a new era of cooperation between the defense department and the CIA. A worthwhile and often enlightening read, this is a revealing and informative first draft of the Bush legacy. --Shawn Carkonen [via]

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  • Bush at War : Inside the Bush White House
    by Bob Woodward
    ISBN 0743204735 (0-7432-0473-5)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    Award-winning author and journalist Bob Woodward turns his attention to the presidency of George W. Bush. Before the acts of terrorism on 11 September, George W. Bush's presidency had been beset by numerous problems. Not only was it in many peoples eyes invalid, very few people took him seriously as a world statesman. Then following one violent mindless act of terrorism, George W. Bush became a president that his country could rely on, one they felt they could trust to lead them through these difficult times. And the world saw a man who was decisive and resolute, a president who was seemingly determined to route out the people who had carried out the heinous acts. But one year after the attacks how has the 44th President of the United States fared? And what were the actual behind the scenes discussions that took place whilst the country was rocked by the crisis? Bob Woodward has been shadowing the President since those fateful events, he was allowed unprecedented access to closed-door meetings and briefings and this masterful book is a look at what really happened. [via]

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  • Bush In Babylon: The Recolonization Of Iraq
    by Tariq Ali
    ISBN 1844675122 (1-84467-512-2)
    Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    Tariq Ali is a novelist, essayist, and BBC commentator who was among the best-known radical student leaders in late 1960s Britain. One of the ways he distinguishes himself from his anti-war contemporaries is via prodigious and multidisciplinary cultural knowledge; he once collaborated with avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman on a film about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance. Bush in Babylon benefits greatly from such knowledge. The book is essentially a harsh critique of the way the Bush administration has dealt with Iraq in the wake of 9-11, referred to as "corporate looting." The most captivating chapter centers on the history of Iraqi resistance as exemplified in poetry made by Iraqis in exile. Ali translates important contemporary works by poets who left during Hussein's regime but are still denied entry back into Iraq by Coalition forces. These are works that have traveled from the Internet to the oral tradition, to become instant spoken-word hits, and they provide a fascinating glimpse into the Iraqi situation that one cannot simply find in a daily newspaper in the West or on CNN. Ali's biggest fault is an undisguised disgust for the "imperialist" United States government. When he lists the casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki alongside those in Vietnam with no discussion of the difference between the two events, he alienates many potential fans of his important work. Bush in Babylon has a lot going for it, despite a polemical tone which invariably grates as one marches through this smart, well-researched book. --Mike McGonigal [via]

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  • Chain Of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
    by Seymour M. Hersh
    ISBN 0060955376 (0-06-095537-6)
    Softcover, Harpercollins

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    Book summary:

    Seymour Hersh has been a legendary investigative reporter since 1969 when he broke the My Lai story in Vietnam. His considerable skill and well-placed sources inside the government, intelligence community, military, and the diplomatic corps have allowed him access to a wide range of information unavailable to most reporters. Chain of Command is packed with specific details and thoughtful analysis of events since the attacks of September 11, 2001, including intelligence failures prior to 9/11; postwar planning regarding Afghanistan and Iraq; the corruption of the Saudi family; Pakistan's nuclear program, which spread nuclear technology via the black market (and admitted as such); influence peddling at the highest levels; and the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, among other topics. The book collects and elaborates on stories Hersh wrote for The New Yorker, and includes an introduction by the magazine's editor, David Remnick, on Hersh's background and his sources.

    Part of Hersh's skill lies in uncovering official reports that have been buried because government or military leaders find them too revealing or embarrassing. Chain of Command is filled with such stories, particularly regarding the manner in which sensitive intelligence was gathered and disseminated within the Bush administration. Hersh details how serious decisions were made in secret by a small handful of people, often based on selective information. Part of the problem was, and remains, a lack of human intelligence in critical parts of the Middle East, but it also has much to do with the considerable infighting within the administration by those trying to make intelligence fit preconceived conclusions. A prime example of this is the story about the files that surfaced allegedly detailing how Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger in order to build nuclear weapons. Though the files were soon proven to be forgeries, the Bush administration still used them as evidence against Saddam Hussein and therefore part of the reason for invading Iraq. In these pages, Hersh offers readers a clearer understanding of what has happened since September 11, and what we might expect in the future. --Shawn Carkonen [via]

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  • Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraq
    by Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor
    ISBN 1400075394 (1-4000-7539-4)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    Book summary:

    Informed by unparalleled access to still-secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military's own internal after-action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq-a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on classified United States government intelligence, it also provides a unique account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted their war strategy.

    Written by Michael R. Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, who spent the war with the Allied land command, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former director of the National Security Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cobra II traces the interactions among the generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush. It dramatically reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought them, providing reliable accounts of the clashes waged by conventional and Special Operations forces. It documents with precision the failures of American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.

    Unimpeachably sourced, Cobra II describes how the American rush to Baghdad provided the opportunity for the virulent insurgency that followed. The brutal aftermath in Iraq was not inevitable and was a surprise to the generals on both sides; Cobra II provides the first authoritative account as to why. It is a book of enduring importance and incisive analysis-a comprehensive account of the most reported yet least understood war in American history. [via]

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  • Disarming Iraq
    by Hans Blix
    ISBN 0375423028 (0-375-42302-8)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    The war against iraq divided opinion throughout the world and generated a maelstrom of spin and counterspin. The man at the eye of the storm, and arguably the only key player to emerge from it with his integrity intact, was hans blix, head of the un weapons inspection team.this is dr. Blix's account of what really happened during the months leading up to the declaration of war in march 2003. In riveting descriptions of his meetings with tony blair, jacques chirac, colin powell, condoleezza rice, and kofi annan, he conveys the frustrations, the tensions, the pressure and the drama as the clock ticked toward the fateful hour. In the process, he asks the vital questions about the war: was it inevitable? why couldn't the u.s. And uk get the backing of the other member states of the un security council? did iraq have weapons of mass destruction? what does the situation in iraq teach us about the propriety and efficacy of policies of preemptive attack and unilateral action?free of the agendas of politicians and ideologues, blix is the plainspoken, measured voice of reason in the cacophony of debate about iraq. His assessment of what happened is invaluable in trying to understand both what brought us to the present state of affairs and what we can learn as we try to move toward peace and security in the world after iraq [via]

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  • The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End
    by Peter W. Galbraith
    ISBN 0743294238 (0-7432-9423-8)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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    The United States invaded Iraq with grand ambitions to bring it democracy and thereby transform the Middle East. Instead, Iraq has disintegrated into three constituent components: a pro-western Kurdistan in the north, an Iran-dominated Shiite entity in the south, and a chaotic Sunni Arab region in the center. The country is plagued by insurgency and is in the opening phases of a potentially catastrophic civil war.George W. Bush broke up Iraq when he ordered its invasion in 2003. The United States not only removed Saddam Hussein, it also smashed and later dissolved the institutions by which Iraq's Sunni Arab minority ruled the country: its army, its security services, and the Baath Party. With these institutions gone and irreplaceable, the basis of an Iraqi state has disappeared.The End of Iraq describes the administration's strategic miscalculations behind the war as well as the blunders of the American occupation. There was the failure to understand the intensity of the ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq. This was followed by incoherent and inconsistent strategies for governing, the failure to spend money for reconstruction, the misguided effort to create a national army and police, and then the turning over of the country's management to Republican political loyalists rather than qualified professionals. As a matter of morality, Peter W. Galbraith writes, the Kurds of Iraq are no less entitled to independence than are Lithuanians, Croatians, or Palestinians. And if the country's majority Shiites want to run their own affairs, or even have their own state, on what democratic principle should they be denied?If the price of a unified Iraq is another dictatorship, Galbraith writes, it is too high a price to pay. The United States must now focus not on preserving or forging a unified Iraq but on avoiding a spreading and increasingly dangerous and deadly civil war. It must accept the reality of Iraq's breakup and work with Iraq's Shiites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions. If they are properly constituted, these regions can provide security, though not all will be democratic. There is no easy exit from Iraq for America. We have to relinquish our present strategy-trying to build national institutions when there is, in fact, no nation. That effort is doomed, Galbraith argues, and it will only leave the United States with an open-ended commitment in circumstances of uncontrollable turmoil. Galbraith has been in Iraq many times over the last twenty-one years during historic turning points for the country: the Iran-Iraq War, the Kurdish genocide, the 1991 uprising, the immediate aftermath of the 2003 war, and the writing of Iraq's constitutions. In The End of Iraq, he offers many firsthand observations of the men who are now Iraq's leaders. He draws on his nearly two decades of involvement in Iraq policy working for the U.S. government to appraise what has occurred and what will happen. The End of Iraq is the definitive account of this war and its ramifications.
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  • Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis
    by Scott Ritter
    ISBN 0743247728 (0-7432-4772-8)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IRAQ?

    Scott Ritter spent seven years in Iraq as an arms inspector for the United Nations. His 1998 resignation as the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector there made front-page headlines around the world. In Endgame, Ritter draws on his experiences to take us inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq and to explain where U.S. policy in Iraq went wrong.

    Ritter describes in detail the ways that Saddam tried to foil inspectors by concealing his weapons programs. He brings readers with him inside some of Iraq's most carefully guarded sites and shows us dramatic face-offs between U.N. inspectors and hostile Iraqi guards and officials. But Ritter criticizes the U.S. for squandering an international consensus on Iraq and trying to use the inspections process for uniquely American goals. He argues strongly against the proposed American military strike against Iraq, suggesting instead a bold and innovative solution to the long-standing crisis. [via]

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  • Endgame : Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and for All
    by Scott Ritter
    ISBN 0684864851 (0-684-86485-1)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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    The resignation of Scott Ritter as chief weapons inspector for UNSCOM in August, 1998, made front-page news around the world. Now Scott Ritter draws on his seven years' experience hunting Saddam's weapons of mass destruction to take readers inside Iraq and show that country as it's never been seen by outsiders before. In "Endgame," he dissects the failure of U.S. policy in Iraq and reveals a bold new approach to ending the ongoing Iraq crisis. [via]

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  • The Fall of Baghdad
    by Jon Lee Anderson
    ISBN 1594200343 (1-59420-034-3)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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    The press coverage of the second Iraq war was notable for the American military's program assigning journalists to be "embedded" with specific military units. While this afforded more personal coverage, the reportage was inherently narrow, missing out on the larger perspective of a sprawling and complex situation and telling stories only from the American troops' point of view. Such is not the case in The Fall of Baghdad, journalist Jon Lee Anderson's harrowing account of the Americans' capture of the Iraqi capital. Anderson was not embedded but on the ground in Baghdad and recounts the increasing anxiety and dread of Iraqi citizens as they try to prepare as best they can for a seemingly inevitable invasion. Not only were the Iraqis fearing for their lives, dwelling as they did in what they knew to be the largest target city in the nation, they also lived in fear of Saddam Hussein while he was still in power and so projected a facade of desperate optimism and unfailing loyalty. Anderson chronicles the collapse of this feigned allegiance and the Iraqi people's joy of being free of Saddam but also reports hints of the kind of anti-American sentiment that would come to deadly fruition in the months following the end of conventional fighting. Additionally, Anderson tells of the journalists covering the war, who struggled with the conflict between their drive to tell the story of what was happening and their desire to stay alive. Anderson keeps the scope of his book limited to the situation within Baghdad, omitting any mention of the larger political issues related to the war, which means that the book is not only non-partisan and highly focused but also incredibly claustrophobic, capturing the feeling of being trapped in a city about to be devastated. --John Moe [via]

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  • Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
    by Thomas E. Ricks
    ISBN 159420103X (1-59420-103-X)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Fiasco is a more strongly worded title than you might expect a seasoned military reporter such as Thomas E. Ricks to use, accustomed as he is to the even-handed style of daily newspaper journalism. But Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and the author of the acclaimed account of Marine Corps boot camp, Making the Corps (released in a 10th anniversary edition to accompany the paperback release of Fiasco), has written a thorough and devastating history of the war in Iraq from the planning stages through the continued insurgency in early 2006, and he does not shy away from naming those he finds responsible. His tragic story is divided in two. The first part--the runup to the war and the invasion in 2003--is familiar from books like Cobra II and Plan of Attack, although Ricks uses his many military sources to portray an officer class that was far more skeptical of the war beforehand than generally reported. But the heart of his book is the second half, beginning in August 2003, when, as he writes, the war really began, with the bombing of the Jordanian embassy and the emergence of the insurgency. His strongest critique is that the U.S. military failed to anticipate--and then failed to recognize--the insurgency, and tried to fight it with conventional methods that only fanned its flames. What makes his portrait particularly damning are the dozens of military sources--most of them on record--who join in his critique, and the thousands of pages of internal documents he uses to make his case for a war poorly planned and bravely but blindly fought.

    The paperback edition of Fiasco includes a new postscript in which Ricks looks back on the year since the book's release, a year in which the intensity and frequency of attacks on American soldiers only increased and in which Ricks's challenging account became accepted as conventional wisdom, with many of the dissident officers in his story given the reins of leadership, although Ricks still finds the prospects for the conflict grim. --Tom Nissley

    A Fiasco, a Year Later

    With the paperback release of Thomas Ricks's Fiasco, a year after the book became a #1 New York Times bestseller and an influential force in transforming the public perception (and the perception within the military and the civilian government as well) of the war in Iraq, we asked Ricks in the questions below to look back on the book and the year of conflict that have followed. On our page for the hardcover edition of Fiasco you can see our earlier Q&A with Ricks, and you can also see two lists he prepared for Amazon customers: his choices for the 10 books for understanding Iraq that aren't about Iraq, a collection of studies of counterinsurgency warfare that became surprisingly popular last year as soldiers and civilians tried to understand the nature of the new conflict, and, as a glimpse into his writing process, a playlist of the music he listened to while writing and researching the book.

    Amazon.com: When we spoke with you a year ago, you said that you thought you were done going back to Baghdad. But that dateline is still showing up in your reports. How have things changed in the city over the past year?

    Thomas E. Ricks: Yes, I had promised my wife that I wouldnt go back. Iraq was taking a toll on both of us--I think my trips of four to six weeks were harder on her than on me.

    But I found I couldn't stay away. The Iraq war is the most important event of our time, I think, and will remain a major news story for years to come. And I felt like everything I had done for the last 15 years--from deployments I'd covered to books and military manuals Id read (and written)--had prepared me to cover this event better than most reporters. So I made a deal with my wife that I would go back to Iraq but would no longer do the riskiest things, such as go on combat patrols or on convoys. I used to have a rule that I would only take the risks necessary to "get the story." Now I don't take even those risks if I can see them, even if that means missing part of a story. Also, I try to keep my trips much shorter.

    How is Baghdad different? It is still a chaotic mess. But it doesn't feel quite as Hobbesian as it did in early 2006. That said, it also feels a bit like a pause--with the so-called "surge," Uncle Sam has put all his chips on the table, and the other players are waiting a bit to see how that plays out.

    Amazon.com: One of the remarkable things over the past year for a reader of Fiasco has been how much of what your book recommends has, apparently, been taken to heart by the military and civilian leadership. As you write in your new postscript to the paperback edition, the war has been "turned over to the dissidents." General David Petraeus, who was one of the first to put classic counterinsurgency tactics to use in Iraq, is now the top American commander there, and he has surrounded himself with others with similar views. What was that transformation like on the inside?

    Ricks: I was really struck when I was out in Baghdad two months ago at how different the American military felt. I used to hate going into the Green Zone because of all the unreal happy talk I'd hear. It was a relief to leave the place, even if being outside it (and contrary to popular myth, most reporters do live outside it) was more dangerous.

    There is a new realism in the U.S. military. In May, I was getting a briefing from one official in the Green Zone and I thought, "Wow, not only does this briefing strike me as accurate, it also is better said than I could do." That feeling was a real change from the old days.

    The other thing that struck me was the number of copies I saw of Fiasco as I knocked around Iraq. When I started writing it, the title was controversial. Now generals say things to me like, "Got it, understand it, agree with it." I am told that the Army War College is making the book required reading this fall.

    Amazon.com: And what are its prospects at this late date?

    Ricks: The question remains, Is it too little too late? It took the U.S. military four years to get the strategy right in Iraq--that is, to understand that their goal should be to protect the people. By that time, the American people and the Iraqi people both had lost of lot of patience. (And by that time, the Iraq war had lasted longer than American participation in World War II.) Also, it isn't clear that we have enough troops to really implement this new strategy of protecting the people. In some parts of Baghdad where U.S. troops now have outposts, the streets are quieter. Yet we're seeing more violence on the outskirts of Baghdad. And the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk make me nervous. I am keeping an eye on them this summer and fall.

    The thing to watch in Iraq is whether we see more tribes making common cause with the U.S. and the Iraqi government. How long will it last? And what does it mean in the long term for Iraq? Is it the beginning of a major change, or just a prelude to a big civil war?

    Amazon.com: You've been a student of the culture of the military for years. How has the war affected the state of the American military: the redeployments, the state of Guard and Reserves troops and the regular Army and Marines, and the relationship to civilian leadership?

    Ricks: I think there is general agreement that there is a huge strain on the military. Essentially, one percent of the nation--soldiers and their families--is carrying the burden. We are now sending soldiers back for their third year-long tours. We've never tried to fight a lengthy ground war overseas with an all-volunteer force. Nor have we ever tried to occupy an Arab country.

    What the long-term effect is on the military will depend in part on how the war ends for us, and for Iraq. But I think it isn't going to be good. Today I was talking to a retired officer and asked him what he was hearing from his friends in Iraq about troop morale. "It's broken," he said. Meanwhile, he said, soldiers he knows who are back home from Iraq "wonder why they were there." Not everyone is as morose as this officer, but the trend isn't good.

    Amazon.com: You quote Gen. Anthony Zinni in your postscript as saying the U.S. is "drifting toward containment" in Iraq. What does containment of what will likely remain a very hot conflict look like? You've written in your postscript and elsewhere that you think we are only in act III of a Shakespearean tragedy. I wouldn't describe Shakespeare's fifth acts as particularly well contained.

    Ricks: I agree with you. Containment would mean some sort of stepping back from the war, probably beginning by halving the American military presence. You'd probably still have U.S. troops inside Iraq, but disengaged from daily fighting. Their goals would be negative ones: prevent genocide, prevent al Qaeda from being able to operate in Iraq, and prevent the war from spreading to outside Iraq. (This was laid out well in a recent study by James Miller and Shawn Brimley, readable at http://www.cnas.org/en/cms/?368.)

    Containment probably would be a messy and demoralizing mission. No one signs up in the U.S. military to stand by as innocents are slaughtered in nearby cities. Yet that might be the case if we did indeed move to this stance and a full-blown civil war (or a couple) ensued. And there surely would be refugees from such fighting. Either they would go to neighboring countries, and perhaps destabilize them, or we would set up "refugee catchment" areas, as another study, by the Brookings Institute, proposed. The open-ended task of guarding those new refugee camps likely would fall to U.S. troops.

    The more you look at Iraq, the more worrisome it gets. As I noted in the new postscript in the paperback edition, many strategic experts I talk to believe that the consequences of the Iraq war are going to be worse for the United States than was the fallout from the Vietnam War.

    Amazon.com: A year and a half is a long time, but let's say that we have a Democratic president in January 2009: President Clinton, or Gore, or Obama. What prospect would a change in administration have for a new strategic opening? Or would the new president likely wind up like Nixon in Vietnam, owning a war he or she didn't begin?

    Ricks: Not such a long time. President Bush has made his major decisions on Iraq. Troop levels are going to have to come down next year, because we don't have replacements on the shelf. So the three big questions for the U.S. government are going to be: How many troops will be withdrawn, what will be the mission of those who remain, and how long will they stay? Those questions are going to be answered by the next president, not this one.

    My gut feeling is the latter: I think we are going to have troops in Iraq through 2009, and probably for a few years beyond that. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if U.S. troops were there in 15 years. But as I say in Fiasco, that's kind of a best-case scenario.

    [via]

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  • From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava
    by Melinda Roth, Jay Kopelman
    ISBN 1592289800 (1-59228-980-0)
    Hardcover, Globe Pequot Pr

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    Book summary:

    In From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava, Jay Kopelman tells a story that is both tender and thought-provoking--candidly portraying the ugly conditions in wartime Iraq, while also describing his (and his fellow Marines') growing attachment to a scruffy stray puppy.

    Here Jay Kopelman answers a few questions about his aspirations as a writer, and the effect his book has had on readers.

    Questions for Jay Kopelman

    Amazon.com: Before you met Lava and had this experience smuggling him out of Iraq, did you ever have ambitions to write a book?

    Jay Kopelman: Yes, I'd considered writing a book previously and have started--but not finished--a novel. Not surprisingly, it's a military murder mystery. And I'm still hoping to get it published. I've also been offered a deal by my publisher to write another book. So I guess I'm now officially an author.

    Amazon.com: How has the military responded to it given that you broke a number of rules during your adventure with Lava?

    Jay Kopelman: I've actually not had any real feedback from the military establishment. In fact, mostly I only get the good-natured ribbing from my contemporaries about how much money I'll make or about who will play me in the movie. When the story first broke a year and a half ago, one of the generals jokingly asked me for an autograph, and I've given the previous commanding general for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force a signed galley. So, thus far, theres been nothing "official" to which I've had to respond. We'll see what happens now that the book is released and there's going to be a media blitz surrounding the book. What you have to remember, though, is that I really didn't use military assets to get Lava home. Nor did I ever endanger anyone in the military while doing so.

    Amazon.com: In the book, you say that you would like it if it can bring hope to people who've lost loved ones in Iraq by showing them how something positive can come out of a brutal situation. Have you heard from people that your book has made them feel better?

    Jay Kopelman: I've not yet heard from anyone whos lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I have heard from a counselor who works with the returning Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, who said she finds the story so very positive and helpful. She's planning to come to the book signing there. I also got an e-mail from a Marine who said that while her unit was in Iraq, they adopted a puppy and tried to bring it home, but he was ultimately put down. She says that the Marines "remember how Charlie the dog helped us. Charlie will always be loved. During a time when we were far from home that dog made us smile." So, I suppose Lava's story does help people remember and gives them hope. Ive also heard from people who appreciate my candor describing the conditions in Iraq.

    td> td>
    [via]

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  • Stansfield, Gareth R. V.: The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy or Division?
    Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division
    by Gareth R. V. Stansfield, Gareth Stansfield
    ISBN 1403971447 (1-4039-7144-7)
    Softcover, Palgrave Macmillan

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  • Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War
    by Evan Wright
    ISBN 042520040X (0-425-20040-X)
    Softcover, Berkley Caliber

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    Book summary:

    In the tradition of black hawk down and jarhead comes a searing portrait of young men fighting a modern-day war. A powerhouse work of nonfiction, generation kill expands on evan wright's acclaimed three-part series that appeared in rolling stone during the summer of 2003. His narrative follows the twenty-three marines of first recon who spearheaded the blitzkrieg on iraq. This elite unit, nicknamed "first suicide battalion," searched out enemy fighters by racing ahead of american battle forces and literally driving into suspected ambush points. Evan wright lived on the front lines with this platoon from the opening hours of combat, to the fall of baghdad, through the start of the guerrilla war. He was welcomed into their ranks, and from this bird's-eye perspective he tells the unsettling story of young men trained by their country to be ruthless killers. He chronicles the triumphs and horrors-physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual-that these marines endured while achieving victory in a war many questioned before it began. Wright's book is a timely account of war; even more important, it is a timeless description of the human drama taking place on today's battlefields. Written with brutal honesty, raw intensity, and startling intimacy, generation kill is destined to become a classic and take its place in the canon of the most captivating and authentic works of war literature [via]

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  • The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
    by Robert Fisk
    ISBN 1400075173 (1-4000-7517-3)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    Book summary:

    During the thirty years that award-winning journalist Robert Fisk has been reporting on the Middle East, he has covered every major event in the region, from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution, from the American hostage crisis in Beirut (as one of only two Western journalists in the city at the time) to the Iran-Iraq War, from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan to Israels invasions of Lebanon, from the Gulf War to the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq. Now he brings his knowledge, his firsthand experience and his intimate understanding of the Middle East to a book that addresses the full complexity of its political history and its current state of affairs.

    Passionate in his concerns about the region and relentless in his pursuit of the truth, Fisk has been able to enter the world of the Middle East and the lives of its people as few other journalists have. The result is a work of stunning reportage. His unblinking eyewitness testimony to the horrors of war places him squarely in the tradition of the great frontline reporters of the Second World War. His searing descriptions of lives mangled in the chaos of battle and of the battles themselves are at once dreadful and heartrending.

    This is also a book of lucid, incisive analysis. Reaching back into the long history of invasion, occupation and colonization in the region, Fisk sets forth this information in a way that makes clear how a history of injustice has condemned the Middle East to war. He lays open the role of the West in the seemingly endless strife and warfare in the region, traces the growth of the Wests involvement and influence there over the past one hundred years, and outlines the Wests record of support for some of the most ruthless leaders in the Middle East. He chronicles the ever-more-powerful military presence of the United States and tracks the consequent, increasingly virulent anti-Westernand particularly anti-Americansentiment among the regions Muslim populations.

    Fisk interweaves this history with his own vividly rendered experiences in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Israel, Palestine and Lebanonon the front lines; behind the scenes; in the streets of cities and villages; and inside military headquarters, the hideouts of guerrillas, the homes of ordinary citizens. Here, too, are indelible portraits of Osama bin Laden, Ayatollah Khomeini and Yassir Arafat, among othersall of whom he has met face-to-facerevelatory in their apprehension of the individuals and the ideologies they represent.

    Finally, The Great War for Civilisation is the story of journalists in war: of their attempts to report the first, impartial drafts of history, to monitor the centers of power, to challenge authority (especially . . . when governments and politicians take us to war) and to battle an increasingly partisan worldwide media in their determination to report the truth.

    Unflinching, provocative, brilliantly writtena work of major importance for todays world. [via]

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  • Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock: Guests of the Sheik
    Guests of the Sheik
    by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
    ISBN 0709102313 (0-7091-0231-3)
    Hardcover, Hale

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  • Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village
    by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
    ISBN 0385014856 (0-385-01485-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    A delightful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, this is an account of Fernea's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. [via]

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  • Tripp, Charles: A History of Iraq
    A History of Iraq
    by Charles Tripp
    ISBN 052152900X (0-521-52900-X)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    Book summary:

    The twentieth-century history of Iraq has been a troubled one. Since its establishment by the British in the 1920s, the country has witnessed the rise and fall of successive regimes, culminating in the dictatorship of Saddam Husain. Charles Tripp's book traces Iraq's political history from its nineteenth-century roots in the Ottoman empire, to the development of the state, its transformation from monarchy to republic and the rise of the Ba'th party and the ascendancy of Saddam Husain. This is a story of social conflict, of power struggles between rival clans, of hostility and wars with neighbouring states, as well as of their aftermath, and Iraq's deteriorating relations with the West. While the book is designed for students and general readers, its incisive analysis of the making of a modern state and how it creates its own distinctive political field will be of interest to academic specialists, journalists and foreign policymakers. [via]

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  • Corn, David: Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
    Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
    by David Corn, Michael Isikoff
    ISBN 030734682X (0-307-34682-X)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    March 2003: The United States invades Iraq.

    October 2006: The world finds out why.

    What was really behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq? As George W. Bush steered the nation to war, who spoke the truth and who tried to hide it? Hubris takes us behind the scenes at the Bush White House, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress to answer all the vital questions about how the Bush administration came to invade Iraq.

    Filled with new revelations, Hubris is a gripping narrative of intrigue that connects the dots between George W. Bushs expletive-laden outbursts at Saddam Hussein, the bitter battles between the CIA and the White House, the fights within the intelligence community over Saddams weapons of mass destruction, the startling influence of an obscure academic on top government officials, the real reason Valerie Plame was outed, and a top reporters ties to wily Iraqi exiles trying to start a war. Written by veteran reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, this is the inside story of how President Bush took the nation to war using faulty and fraudulent intelligence. It is a news-making account of conspiracy, backstabbing, bureaucratic ineptitude, journalistic malfeasance, and, especially, arrogance. [via]

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  • A Hundred And One Days
    by Asne Seierstad, Ingrid Christophersen
    ISBN 0465076017 (0-465-07601-7)
    Softcover, Perseus Books Group

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    Book summary:

    For one hundred and one days Asne Seierstad worked as a reporter in Baghdad. Always in search of a story far less obvious than the American military invasion, Seierstad brings to life the world behind the headlines in this compelling- and heartbreaking-account of her time among the people of Iraq. From the moment she first arrived in Baghdad on a ten-day visa, she was determined to unearth the modern secrets of an ancient place and to find out how the Iraqi people really live. What do people miss most when their world changes overnight? What do they choose to say when they can suddenly say what they like? Seierstad reveals what life is like for everyday people under the constant threat of attack- first from the Iraqi government and later from American bombs. Displaying the novelist's eye and lyrical storytelling that have won her awards around the world, Seierstad here brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters, from foreign press apparatchik Uday, to Zahra, a mother of three, to Aliya, the guide and translator who becomes a friend. Putting their trust in a European woman with no obvious agenda, these and other Iraqis speak for themselves, to tell the stories we never see on the evening news.
    [via]

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  • A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal
    by Asne Seierstad, Ingrid Christophersen
    ISBN 0465076009 (0-465-07600-9)
    Hardcover, Perseus Books Group

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    Book summary:

    From January until April 2003—for one hundred and one days—Åsne Seierstad worked as a reporter in Bagdad for Scandinavian, German, and Dutch media. Through her articles and live television coverage she reported on the events in Iraq before, during, and after the attacks by the American and British forces.But Seierstad was after a story far less obvious than the military invasion. From the moment she arrived in Baghdad Seierstad was determined to understand the modern secrets of an ancient place and to find out how the Iraqi people really live. In A Hundred and One Days, she introduces us to daily life under the constant threat of attack—first from the Iraqi government and later from American bombs. Moving from the deafening silence of life under Hussein to the explosions that destroyed the power supply, the water supply, and security, Seierstad sets out to discover: What happens to people when the dam bursts? What do they choose to say when they can suddenly say what they like? What do they miss most when their world changes overnight?Displaying the novelists eye and lyrical storytelling that have won her awards around the world, Seierstad here brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters to tell the stories we never see on the evening news. The only woman in the world to cover both the fall of Kabul in 2001 and the bombings of Baghdad in 2003, Åsne Seierstad has redefined war reporting with her mesmerizing book.
    [via]

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  • Zabor, Rafi: I, Wabenzi: A Souvenir, Aporia
    I, Wabenzi: A Souvenir, Aporia
    by Rafi Zabor
    ISBN 9780374299 (978-037-429-9)
    Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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  • Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
    by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
    ISBN 1400044871 (1-4000-4487-1)
    Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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    Book summary:

    An unprecedented account of life in Baghdads Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.

    The Washington Posts former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone: into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little Americaa half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theater that screened shoot-em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning servicemuch of it run by Halliburton. Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up.

    Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III to the fleet of twentysomethings hired to implement the idea that Americans could build a Jeffersonian democracy in an embattled Middle Eastern country.

    In the vacuum of postwar planning, Bremer ignores what Iraqis tell him they want or need and instead pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutionsa flat tax, a sell-off of Iraqi government assets, and an end to food rationing. His underlings spend their days drawing up pie-in-the-sky policies, among them a new traffic code and a law protecting microchip designs, instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production. His almost comic initiatives anger the locals and help fuel the insurgency.

    Chandrasekaran details Bernard Keriks ludicrous attempt to train the Iraqi police and brings to light lesser known but typical travesties: the case of the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of reestablishing Baghdads stock exchange; a contractor with no previous experience paid millions to guard a closed airport; a State Department employee forced to bribe Americans to enlist their help in preventing Iraqi weapons scientists from defecting to Iran; Americans willing to serve in Iraq screened by White House officials for their views on Roe v. Wade; people with prior expertise in the Middle East excluded in favor of lesser-qualified Republican Party loyalists. Finally, he describes Bremers ignominious departure in 2004, fleeing secretly in a helicopter two days ahead of schedule.

    This is a startling portrait of an Oz-like place where a vital aspect of our governments folly in Iraq played out. It is a book certain to be talked about for years to come. [via]

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  • Atkinson, Rick: In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat
    In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat
    by Rick Atkinson
    ISBN 0805077731 (0-8050-7773-1)
    Softcover, Henry Holt & Co

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    Book summary:

    The advent of embedded reporters in the opening days of the 2003 US war on Iraq meant a more direct and personal point of view than battlefield coverage has historically offered. Rick Atkinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for An Army at Dawn, an account of combat in North Africa during World War II, traveled with the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army from its deployment out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky through its entry into Baghdad. The result, In the Company of Soldiers, is a thoroughly engrossing look at the strategies, personalities, and struggles of waging modern warfare. Much of Atkinson's focus falls on the division's leader, the hugely competitive and charismatic Major General David Petraeus, who seems to guide his troops through Iraq by sheer force of will. Atkinson devotes most of his time to the senior commanders, but the loss of the G.I. perspective, while disappointing, is outweighed by Atkinson's access to the minds of the brass who must navigate an Iraq whose citizens were not nearly as happy as military planners had hoped and who offered resistance in ways other than what the Americans had prepared for. While plenty has been written about the American military effort in Iraq, Atkinson's perspective, combined with a direct, economical writing style, allows him to present sides to the war not often seen or considered: long periods of waiting punctuated with mad scrambles to apply gas masks, fretting over how to pack all necessary supplies into tiny kits, dealing with dust storms that can ground state of the art attack helicopters, and reading the irreverent yet shrewdly observant graffiti left by American soldiers. In the Company of Soldiers lionizes the American military officers but it neither condemns nor offers unqualified praise to the US effort in Iraq. Indeed, the disturbing omens of chaos hinted at soon after the invasion began in the spring of 2003 would come into sharper relief when the book was published a year later. --John Moe [via]

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  • The Iraq Study Group Report: Authorized Edition
    by Lee H. Hamilton, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, James A. Baker, Iraq Study Group
    ISBN 0307386562 (0-307-38656-2)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    On March 15, 2006, members from both parties in Congress supported the creation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to review the situation on the ground and propose strategies for the way forward. For more than eight months, the Study Group met with military officers, regional experts, academics, journalists, and high-level government officials from America and abroad. Participants included George W. Bush and members of his cabinet; Bill Clinton; Jalal Talabani; Nouri Kamal al-Maliki; Generals John Abizaid, George Casey, and Anthony Zinni; Colin Powell; Thomas Friedman; George Packer; and many others. This official edition contains the Group's findings and proposals for improving security, strengthening the new government, rebuilding the economy and infrastructure, and maintaining stability in the region. It is a highly anticipated and essential step forward for Iraq, America, and the world. [via]

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  • The Iraq Study Group Report, the Way Forward: A New Approach
    by Lee H. Hamilton, Iraq Study Group
    ISBN 1599862395 (1-59986-239-5)
    Softcover, Filiquarian Pub Llc

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  • The Iraq War
    by John Keegan
    ISBN 1400079209 (1-4000-7920-9)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    John Keegan is recognized as one of the top military writers of his day, having authored comprehensive analyses of both World Wars and other significant historical events. In The Iraq War, he takes on a situation that was still murky and volatile at the time of publication. The result is a book rich with detailed information on the region and its key figures but somewhat hasty in its effort to provide a succinct history lesson. In the opening chapter, Keegan writes "The war was not only successful but peremptorily short, lasting only twenty-one days from 20 March to 9 April," and he later gives little mention to the protracted and amorphous violence in the region since Baghdad fell, characterizing as "aftermath" that which many see as the actual war itself. Between these sections, however, Keegan provides valuable insight into the geopolitical history of the region and provides an extensive biography of a ruler of whom most Westerners became aware only in the early 1990s: Saddam Hussein. Keegan presents Saddam as a brutal thug who is also possessed of a powerful and vicious political savvy, and charts his growth from Ba'ath Party muscleman to ruler of Iraq. Sections on the military efforts of the U.S. and British forces are extensively detailed and offer insight into not only what the plans of the coalition forces were but the strategic philosophies behind them as well. Keegan characterizes the war as "mysterious," seeking to understand why opposition forces seemed to disappear from active combat and why the citizens of Iraq paid the conflict little regard. And while such mysteries have not yet been solved, it is clear given the ongoing instability in Iraq that the final chapters of the Iraq War have yet to be written. --John Moe [via]

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  • Sifry, Micah L.: The Iraq War Reader : History, Documents, Opinions
    The Iraq War Reader : History, Documents, Opinions
    by Micah L. Sifry, Christopher Cerf
    ISBN 0743253477 (0-7432-5347-7)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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  • Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
    by Anthony Swofford
    ISBN 141651340X (1-4165-1340-X)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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    Book summary:

    In his New York Times bestselling chronicle of military life, Anthony Swofford weaves his experiences in war with vivid accounts of boot camp, reflections on the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family. When the U.S. Marines-or "jarheads"-were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for the Gulf War, Anthony Swofford was there. He lived in sand for six months; he was punished by boredom and fear; he considered suicide, pulled a gun on a fellow marine, and was targeted by both enemy and friendly fire. As engagement with the Iraqis drew near, he was forced to consider what it means to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man. [via]

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  • The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq
    by John Crawford
    ISBN 1594482012 (1-59448-201-2)
    Softcover, Riverhead Books

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    Book summary:

    John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition, willingly exchanging one weekend a month and two weeks a year for a free education. But in Autumn 2002, one semester short of graduating and newly marriedin fact, on his honeymoonhe was called to active duty and sent to the front lines in Iraq.

    Crawford and his unit spent months upon months patrolling the streets of Baghdad, occupying a hostile city. During the breaks between patrols, Crawford began writing the true stories of what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and experienced. Those stories became this booka haunting and powerful, compellingly honest book that imparts the on-the-ground reality of waging the war in Iraq, and marks as the introduction of a mighty literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances.

    [via]

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  • The Librarian Of Basra: A True Story From Iraq
    by Jeanette Winter
    ISBN 0152054456 (0-15-205445-6)
    Hardcover, Harcourt Childrens Books

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    Book summary:

    "In the Koran, the first thing God said to Muhammad was 'Read.'"*
    --Alia Muhammad Baker

    Alia Muhammad Baker is a librarian in Basra, Iraq. For fourteen years, her library has been a meeting place for those who love books. Until now. Now war has come, and Alia fears that the library--along with the thirty thousand books within it--will be destroyed forever.

    In a war-stricken country where civilians--especially women--have little power, this true story about a librarian's struggle to save her community's priceless collection of books reminds us all how, throughout the world, the love of literature and the respect for knowledge know no boundaries.

    Includes an author's note.
    *From the New York Times, July 27, 2003
    [via]

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  • A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
    by Christopher Hitchens
    ISBN 0452284988 (0-452-28498-8)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    History [via]

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  • Mayada, Daughter of Iraq: One Woman's Survival Under Saddam Hussein
    by Jean Sasson
    ISBN 0451212924 (0-451-21292-4)
    Softcover, New Amer Library

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    Book summary:

    Jean Sasson met Mayada Al-Askari on a trip to Baghdad in 1998. One year later, Jean learned that Mayada had been taken without the knowledge of her family from the tiny print shop that she owned, and imprisoned in the notorious Baladiyat Prisonheadquarters of Saddam Husseins infamous secret police.

    Mayadas story both past and present is truly incredible. Her family was one of the most distinguished and honored families in Iraq. One grandfather fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia. The other was the first true Arab nationalist (admired greatly by Saddam Hussein). Her uncle was Prime Minister of Iraq for nearly forty years; her mother, an important government official.

    From personal meetings with Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali to raising two small children as a single mother, Mayadas life was at once privileged, yet carefully balanced. But life can shift quickly in Iraq and Mayada finds herself thrown into a small cell with seventeen other women. The shadow women. The women rally around each other to share their unbelievable stories and in so doing gain the strength to survive. The names of the shadow women are scrawled in charcoal onto the cell wall in the hopes that one day one of them will make it out to tell others of their existence. This is Mayadas courageous story, but also that of her sisters. [via]

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  • My War: Killing Time in Iraq
    by Colby Buzzell
    ISBN 0425211363 (0-425-21136-3)
    Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    My War is a book that will challenge many of the most common assumptions about the Iraq War and the people fighting in it. Colby Buzzell, the book's author and a U.S. Army machine-gunner who did a year-long tour in Iraq, is not the stereotypical small-town soldier from a Red State. He grew up in San Francisco eating pot brownies at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, skateboarding, and listening to punk and heavy metal. He supported Ralph Nader for president, reads George Orwell, and his dad worked in Silicon Valley. But he was sick of his "life in oblivion," bouncing around from one dead-end job to another. As Buzzell writes in his typically gritty prose, "I didnt want to get all old and have my bratty grandkids ask me, 'Grandpa, where were you during the Iraq war?' and me going, 'Oh, I was busy doing temp work and data entry for 12 bucks an hour.'"

    In search of adventure, Buzzell joined the army and got sent to Iraq. First stationed in the ultra-dangerous Sunni Triangle, he quickly mastered how to use the M240 Bravo machine gun: "Just get behind that muthafucka and just fire it." His fellow soldiers, mostly hip-hop fans or headbanging metal-heads like him, killed time watching porn on mini-portable DVD players or listening to Metallica on their iPods while on patrol. Long boring spells were interrupted by wild fits of confusing action. On one of Buzzell's first missions, two platoons fired thousands of rounds at near point-blank range at an unarmed Iraqi civilian. Amazingly, he survived. Out of boredom, Buzzell started a blog, one of the first by an ordinary "Joe" grunt in Iraq. It became a media sensation and got Buzzell in trouble with the REMFs ("Rear Echelon Mutha Fuckers") because of his less-than-glamorous portrayal of the war and his superiors, whom he accuses of constantly lying to the public and the soldiers under their command. My War may be disappointing to readers looking for deeper introspections on the moral questions behind the war, but it is a pretty convincing case against the claim that everything in Iraq is going fine. --Alex Roslin [via]

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  • Lawrence, Vint: Naked In Baghdad
    Naked In Baghdad
    by Vint Lawrence, Anne Garrels
    ISBN 0312424191 (0-312-42419-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War As Seen by National Public Radio's Correspondent
    by Vint Lawrence, Anne Garrels
    ISBN 0374529035 (0-374-52903-5)
    Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux

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    Book summary:

    As National Public Radio's senior foreign correspondent, Anne Garrels has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. She is renowned for direct, down-to-earth, insightful reportage, and for her independent take on what she sees. One of only sixteen un-embedded American journalists who stayed in Baghdad's now-legendary Palestine Hotel throughout the American invasion of Iraq, she was at the very center of the storm. Naked in Baghdad gives us the sights, sounds, and smells of our latest war with unparalleled vividness and immediacy. Garrels's narrative starts with several trips she made to Baghdad before the war, beginning in October 2002. At its heart is her evolving relationship with her Iraqi driver/minder, Amer, who becomes her friend and confidant, often serving as her eyes and ears among the populace and taking her where no other reporter was able to penetrate. Amer's own strong reactions and personal dilemma provide a trenchant counterpoint to daily events. The story is also punctuated by e-mail bulletins sent by Garrels's husband, Vint Lawrence, to their friends around the world, giving a private view of the rough-and-tumble, often dangerous life of a foreign correspondent, along with some much-needed comic relief. The result is enthralling, deeply personal, utterly authentic--an on-the-ground picture of the war in Iraq that no one else could have written. As Chicago Sun-Times critic Lloyd Sachs wrote about Garrels's work in Baghdad, "a few choice words, honestly delivered, are worth more than a thousand pictures . . . In your mind's eye, they carry lasting truth." [via]

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  • Shadid, Anthony: Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
    Night Draws Near: Iraq's People In The Shadow Of America's War
    by Anthony Shadid
    ISBN 0312426038 (0-312-42603-8)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
    by Bing West
    ISBN 0553383191 (0-553-38319-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    "This is the face of war as only those who have fought it can describe it."Senator John McCain

    Fallujah: Iraqs most dangerous city unexpectedly emerged as the major battleground of the Iraqi insurgency. For twenty months, one American battalion after another tried to quell the violence, culminating in a bloody, full-scale assault. Victory came at a terrible price: 151 Americans and thousands of Iraqis were left dead.

    The epic battle for Fallujah revealed the startling connections between policy and combat that are a part of the new reality of war.

    The Marines had planned to slip into Fallujah as soft as fog. But after four American contractors were brutally murdered, President Bush ordered an attack on the cityagainst the advice of the Marines. The assault sparked a political firestorm, and the Marines were forced to withdraw amid controversy and confusiononly to be ordered a second time to take a city that had become an inferno of hate and the lair of the archterrorist al-Zarqawi.

    Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every levelsenior policymakers, negotiators, generals, and soldiers and Marines on the front linesNo True Glory is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complexand often costlyinterconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty-first century.


    From the Hardcover edition. [via]

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  • No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
    by Francis J. West, Bing West
    ISBN 0553804022 (0-553-80402-2)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    "This is the face of war as only those who have fought it can describe it."Senator John McCain

    Fallujah: Iraqs most dangerous city unexpectedly emerged as the major battleground of the Iraqi insurgency. For twenty months, one American battalion after another tried to quell the violence, culminating in a bloody, full-scale assault. Victory came at a terrible price: 151 Americans and thousands of Iraqis were left dead.

    The epic battle for Fallujah revealed the startling connections between policy and combat that are a part of the new reality of war.

    The Marines had planned to slip into Fallujah as soft as fog. But after four American contractors were brutally murdered, President Bush ordered an attack on the cityagainst the advice of the Marines. The assault sparked a political firestorm, and the Marines were forced to withdraw amid controversy and confusiononly to be ordered a second time to take a city that had become an inferno of hate and the lair of the archterrorist al-Zarqawi.

    Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every levelsenior policymakers, negotiators, generals, and soldiers and Marines on the front linesNo True Glory is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complexand often costlyinterconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty-first century. [via]

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  • Fick, Nathaniel C.: One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
    One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
    by Nathaniel C. Fick
    ISBN 0618773436 (0-618-77343-6)
    Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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    Book summary:

    A former captain in the Marines First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle.

    If the Marines are “the few, the proud, Recon Marines are the fewest and the proudest. Only one Marine in a hundred qualifies for Recon, charged with working clandestinely, often behind enemy lines. Ficks training begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth, and advances to the pinnacle—Recon—four years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. Along the way, he learns to shoot a man a mile away, stays awake for seventy-two hours straight, endures interrogation and torture at the secretive SERE course, learns to swim with Navy SEALs, masters the Eleven Principles of Leadership, and much more.

    His vast skill set puts him in front of the front lines, leading twenty-two Marines into the deadliest conflict since Vietnam. He vows he will bring all his men home safely, and to do so hell need more than his top-flight education. Hell need luck and an increasingly clear vision of the limitations of his superiors and the missions they assign him. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between the military ideals he learned and military practice, which can mock those ideals. One Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but it is an ultimately inspiring account of mastering the art of war.
    [via]

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  • The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
    by Ron Suskind
    ISBN 0743271106 (0-7432-7110-6)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.

    You may think you know what the "war on terror" is.

    But to know it "truly," you must read this book.

    Suskind has written a riveting work of narrative nonfiction, filled with exclusive, historically significant disclosures that will echo across America and the world.

    What is the guiding principle of the world's most powerful nation as it searches for enemies at home and abroad? The One Percent Doctrine is the deeply secretive core of America's real playbook: a default strategy, designed by Dick Cheney, that separates America from its moorings, and has driven everything -- from war in Afghanistan to war in Iraq to the global search for jihadists.

    The story begins on September 12, 2001, the day America began to gather itself for a response to the unimaginable. Ultimately, that reply would shape the nation's very character.

    Suskind tells us what actually occurred over the next three years, from the inside out, by tracing the steps of the key actors -- the notables, from the President and Vice President to George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, who oversee the "war on terror" and report progress to an anxious nation; and the invisibles, the men and women just below the line of sight, left to improvise plans to defeat a new kind of enemy in an hour-by-hour race against disaster. The internal battles between these two teams -- one, under the hot lights; the other, actually fighting the fight -- reveal everything about what America faces, and whatit has done, in this age of terror.

    Who is actually running U.S. foreign policy? Is there an operational cell, armed with WMDs, inside the United States? Have some of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- including leaders of al Qaeda -- been caught and accidentally released? Can America prevail in this struggle against enemies who are patient, ingenious, certain, and have clear tactical advantage?

    With his unparalleled access to senior officials, past and present, Ron Suskind -- author of" The Price of Loyalty, "the most revealing book yet written on the Bush administration -- finally answers the questions that keep Americans awake at night.

    And in this startling book, he reframes the debates that roil the globe.

    [via]

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  • Plan of Attack
    by Bob Woodward
    ISBN 0743255488 (0-7432-5548-8)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    The 2003 American invasion of Iraq was contentious, not just in the arena of global public opinion, but within the tight-lipped world of the George W. Bush White House. As Bob Woodward reveals in Plan of Attack, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were part of a group leading the charge to war while Secretary of State Colin Powell, General Tommy Franks, and others actively questioned the plan to invade a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks while war in Afghanistan was still being waged. Woodward gained extensive access to dozens of key figures and enjoyed hours of direct contact with the President himself (more time, seemingly, than former Bush administration officials Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill claim to have had). As a result, he's able to cite the kind of gossip you won't find in a White House press release: Franks calls Pentagon official Douglas Feith "the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," Powell shares his alarm over how the cautious Cheney of the first Bush administration had transformed into a zealot, and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar seems to enjoy significantly more entrée and influence than most anyone would have thought. Bush is shown as a man intent on toppling Saddam Hussein in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and never really wavering in his decision despite offering hints that non-military solutions could be achieved. Light is also shed on CIA director George Tenet, who insists that the evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk" only to later admit that his intelligence was flawed when months of post-war searches turned up nothing. But the book's most interesting character is Powell. A former soldier himself, who finds himself increasingly at odds with the agenda of the administration, Powell rejects evidence on WMDs that he sees as spurious but ultimately endorses the invasion effort, apparently out of duty. Upon its publication, the Bush administration roundly denied many of the accounts in the book that demonstrated conflict within their circles, poor judgment, or lousy planning, but the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign nonetheless listed Plan of Attack as recommended reading. And it is. It shows alarming problems in the way the war was conceived and planned, but it also demonstrates the tremendous conviction and dedication of the people who decided to carry it out. --John Moe [via]

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  • Bamford, James: A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
    A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
    by James Bamford
    ISBN 140003034X (1-4000-3034-X)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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  • Pride of Baghdad
    by Brian K. Vaughan, Niko Henrichon
    ISBN 1401203140 (1-4012-0314-0)
    Hardcover, Dc Comics

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    Book summary:

    From one of Americas most critically acclaimed graphic novel writers  inspired by true events, a startlingly original look at life on the streets of Baghdad during the Iraq War.

    In his award-winning work on Y THE LAST MAN and EX MACHINA (one of Entertainment Weeklys 2005 Ten Best Fiction titles), writer Brian K. Vaughan has displayed an understanding of both the cost of survival and the political nuances of the modern world. Now, in this provocative graphic novel, Vaughan examines life on the streets of war-torn Iraq.

    In the spring of 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad zoo during an American bombing raid. Lost and confused, hungry but finally free, the four lions roamed the decimated streets of Baghdad in a desperate struggle for their lives. In documenting the plight of the lions, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD raises questions about the true meaning of liberation  can it be given or is it earned only through self-determination and sacrifice? And in the end, is it truly better to die free than to live life in captivity?

    Based on a true story, VAUGHAN and artist NIKO HENRICHON (Barnum!) have created a unique and heartbreaking window into the nature of life during wartime, illuminating this struggle as only the graphic novel can. [via]

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  • Stewart, Rory: The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
    Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
    by Rory Stewart
    ISBN 0156032791 (0-15-603279-1)
    Softcover, Harcourt

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  • Al-Khalil, Samir: Republic of Fear : Inside Story of Saddam's Iraq
    Republic of Fear : Inside Story of Saddam's Iraq
    by Samir Al-Khalil
    ISBN 067973502X (0-679-73502-X)
    Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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  • Al-Khalil, Samir: Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq
    Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq
    by Samir Al-Khalil
    ISBN 0520064429 (0-520-06442-9)
    Hardcover, Univ of California Pr

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  • Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi
    by Salam Pax
    ISBN 0802140440 (0-8021-4044-0)
    Softcover, Grove Pr

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    Book summary:

    Salam Pax has attracted a huge worldwide readership for the Internet diary he kept during the buildup, prosecution, and aftermath of the war in Iraq. Bringing his incisive and sharply funny Web postings together in print for the first time, Salam Pax provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraq conflict and will be the subject of global media attention. In September 2002, twenty-nine-year-old Iraqi architect calling himself "Salam Pax" began posting daily accounts of everyday life in Baghdad onto the Internet. Salam daily risked retribution from Saddam's regime, as more than 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that Salam voiced in his diary. Salam Pax's sharp, candid, and often dryly funny articles soon attracted a worldwide readership. In the months that followed, as a huge American-led force gathered to destroy Saddam's hated regime, Salam's Internet diary became a unique record of the anticipation, anger, resentment, humor, and sheer terror felt by an ordinary man living through the final days of Saddam Hussein's twenty-five-year dictatorship, and the aftermath of its destruction.
    [via]

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  • Saturday
    by Ian McEwan
    ISBN 1400076196 (1-4000-7619-6)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    From the pen of a master - the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement - comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive. [via]

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  • Diamond, Larry: Squandered Victory: The American Occupation And the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq
    Squandered Victory : The American Occupation and Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq
    by Larry Diamond
    ISBN 0805080082 (0-8050-8008-2)
    Softcover, Henry Holt & Co

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  • State of Denial : Bush at War
    by Bob Woodward
    ISBN 0743272234 (0-7432-7223-4)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    "Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year.'' This was the secret Pentagon assessment sent to the White House in May 2006. The forecast of a more violent 2007 in Iraq contradicted the repeated optimistic statements of President Bush, including one, two days earlier, when he said we were at a ''turning point" that history would mark as the time "the forces of terror began their long retreat." State of Denial examines how the Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to Congress, and often to themselves. Two days after the May report, the Pentagon told Congress, in a report required by law, that the "appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007." In this detailed inside story of a war-torn White House, Bob Woodward reveals how White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, with the indirect support of other high officials, tried for 18 months to get Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replaced. The president and Vice President Cheney refused. At the beginning of Bush's second term, Stephen Hadley, who replaced Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser, gave the administration a 'D minus' on implementing its policies. A secret report to the new Secretary of State Rice from her counselor stated that, nearly two years after the invasion, Iraq was a "failed state." The book reveals that at the urging of Cheney and Rumsfeld, the most frequent outside visitor and Iraq adviser to President Bush is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, haunted still by the loss in Vietnam, emerges as a hidden and potent voice. Woodward reveals that the secretary of defense himself believes that the system of coordination among departments and agencies is broken, and in a secret May 1, 2006 memo Rumsfeld stated, that "the current system of government makes competence next to impossible." State of Denial answers the core questions: What happened after the invasion of Iraq? Why? How does Bush make decisions and manage a war that he chose to define his presidency? And is there an achievable plan for victory? [via]

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  • Pollack, Kenneth M.: The Threatening Storm : The Case for Invading Iraq
    The Threatening Storm : The Case for Invading Iraq
    by Kenneth M. Pollack
    ISBN 0375509283 (0-375-50928-3)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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  • Polk, William R.: Understanding Iraq: The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History, from Genghis Khan's Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American Occupation
    Understanding Iraq: The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History, From Genghis Khan's Mongols To The Ottoman Turks To The British Mandate To The American Occupation
    by William R. Polk
    ISBN 0060764694 (0-06-076469-4)
    Softcover, Harpercollins

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    Book summary:

    Iraq will continue to be a major issue and involvement for the United States into the foreseeable future says William R. Polk, former member of the State Department's Policy Planning Council and professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Chicago. Iraq sits on the world's largest supply of oil, and with the world's energy requirements continuously rising, Iraq will play an ongoing role in the global economy and the political environment throughout the Gulf region and the Middle East.

    Polk's concise, authoritative overview of Iraq's history shows how the pattern of outside intervention was established first by the Ottoman Turks and the Persian Safavids and later by England, Russia, and Germany. After World War I came British rule, followed by a brief and uneasy period of independence that sparked Iraqi nationalism, leading Saddam Husain to power with American military and financial aid and covert CIA involvement. The Iraq-Iran War and the invasion of Kuwait was followed by the Gulf War, the sanctions period, and the Bush administration's decision to invade. Finally, there is the American occupation and the challenges, opportunities, and options that Iraqis and Americans face now and in the future.

    [via]

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  • Ayres, Chris: War Reporting for Cowards
    War Reporting for Cowards
    by Chris Ayres
    ISBN 0802142567 (0-8021-4256-7)
    Softcover, Grove Pr

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    Book summary:

    Chris Ayres is a small-town boy, a hypochondriac, and a neat freak with an anxiety disorder. Not exactly the picture of a war correspondent. But when his boss asks him if he would like to go to Iraq, he doesn't have the guts to say no.
    After signing a $1 million life-insurance policy, studying a tutorial on repairing severed limbs, and spending $20,000 in camping gear (only to find out that his bright yellow tent makes him a sitting duck), Ayres is embedded with a battalion of gung ho Marines who either shun him or threaten him when he files an unfavorable story. As time goes on, though, he begins to understand them (and his inexplicably enthusiastic fellow war reporters) more and more: Each night of terrifying combat brings, in the morning, something more visceral than he has ever experienced-the thrill of having won a fight for survival.
    In the tradition of M*A*S*H, Catch-22, and other classics in which irreverence springs from life in extremis, War Reporting for Cowards tells the story of Iraq in a way that is extraordinarily honest, heartfelt, and bitterly hilarious.
    [via]

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  • Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War in Iraq
    by Sheldon Rampton, John C. Stauber
    ISBN 1585422762 (1-58542-276-2)
    Softcover, J P Tarcher

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    Book summary:

    Weapons of Mass Deception reveals:

    • How the Iraq war was sold to the American public through professional P.R. strategies.

    • "The First Casualty": Lies that were told related to the Iraq war.

    • Euphemisms and jargon related to the Iraq war, e.g. "shock and awe," "Operation Iraqi Freedom," "axis of evil," "coalition of the willing," etc.

    • "War as Opportunity": How the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq have been used as marketing hooks to sell products and policies that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism.

    • "Brand America": The efforts of Charlotte Beers and other U.S. propaganda campaigns designed to win hearts overseas.

    • "The Mass Media as Propaganda Vehicle": How news coverage followed Washington's lead and language.

    The book includes a glossary  "Propaganda: A User's Guide"  and resources to help Americans sort through the deceptions to see the strings behind Washington's campaign to sell the Iraq war to the public.

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    More editions of Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War in Iraq:

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