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An on-the-ground commander describes his brigade's first year in Iraq after the U.S. forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and explains what went right and wrong as the U.S. military confronted an insurgency, in a firsthand analysis of success and failure in Iraq.
"In August 2003 a young Iraqi blogger began reporting her experiences as a civilian observer in Baghdad. Calling herself Riverbend, she has offered searing eyewitness accounts of daily life in the war zone and has garnered a worldwide audience hungry for unfiltered news and fresh analysis." "Riverbend's blog, Baghdad Burning, collected here for the first time, responds to events both personal and political - from the impact on her family of the invasion's aftermath to the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. She reveals for us most sharply the fate of Iraqi women, whose rights and freedoms are falling victim to rising fundamentalisms." "Describing the reality of regime change in Iraq in a voice at turns outraged, witty, and deeply moving, Riverbend is a witness to the recent events that are shaping the future of her homeland."--BOOK JACKET.
The first king of Iraq, Faisal I, was installed by the British in 1921 - he was pro-British, and was thus deemed 'suitable' to lead an independent Iraq. But his successors - his son Ghazi and Faisal II - both met their demise in suspicious and bloody manners. This book is a unique and timely account of Iraqi history.
“A winning blend of travelogue and literary biography” by a British journalist who travels the journey Agatha Christie once did from London to Iraq. (Entertainment Weekly) With her marriage to her first husband over, Agatha Christie decided to take a much needed holiday; the Caribbean had been her intended destination, but a conversation at a dinner party with a couple who had just returned from Iraq changed her mind. Five days later she was off on a completely different trajectory. Merging literary biography with travel adventure, and ancient history with contemporary world events, Andrew Eames tells a riveting tale and reveals fascinating and little-known details of this exotic chapter...
This unique anthology of Iraqi noir fiction collects fourteen original stories of crime, conspiracy, regret, and revenge in the capital of Iraq. The centuries-old city of Baghdad has known many rulers, many troubles, and many crimes. But while most Iraqis would agree that their life has always been noir, there has not been a literary tradition to capture this aspect of the culture. By commissioning the fourteen stories collected here—most by Iraqi writers, all by authors familiar with Baghdad—editor Samuel Shimon and Akashic Books have created what may be the first anthology of Iraqi crime fiction ever assembled. Here you will read of life in Baghdad both during and after the Saddam Huss...
Baghdad Central is a noir debut novel set in Baghdad in September 2003. The US occupation of Iraq is a swamp of incompetence and self-delusion. The CPA has disbanded the Iraqi army and police as a consequence of its paranoid policy of de-Ba'athification of Iraqi society. Tales of hubris and reality-denial abound, culminating in Washington hailing the mess a glorious "mission accomplished." Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji is a mid-level Iraqi cop who deserted his post back in April. Khafaji has lived long enough in pre- and post-Saddam Iraq to know that clinging on to anything but poetry and his daughter, Mrouj, is asking for trouble. Nabbed by the Americans and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib, Khafaji ...
An explosive conflict, as seen through the eyes of a war artist. Bagdad Journal is the outstanding culmination of four voyages to war-torn Iraq by artist Steve Mumford. In the long tradition of war artists, particularly Winslow Homer's work for Harper's Magazine, Mumford meticulously documents the everyday scenes of Iraq in bold, breathtaking watercolors and drawings and paints a human side of the war that can be lost in the immediacy of photographic and broadcast images. Not overtly political, Bagdad Journal presents portraits of life from all sides of the polarizing conflict. With sketch pad and notebook in hand, Mumford illuminates the routine activities of a nation in turmoil-from the individual soldiers of American platoons to Baghdad residents going about their daily lives amid the chaos surrounding them. There will be a traveling exhibit of artwork from Baghdad Journal and presentations by Mumford on his Iraq experience in conjunction with the publication of this book.
In February 2003, Patrick Cockburn secretly crossed the Tigris river from Syria into Iraq just before the US/British invasion, and has covered the war ever since. In The Occupation, he provides a vivid and disturbing picture of a country in turmoil, and the dangers and privations endured by its people. The Occupation explores the mosaic of communities in Iraq, the US and Britain's failure to understand the country they were invading and how this led to fatal mistakes. Cockburn, who has been visiting Iraq since 1978, describes the disintegration of the country under the occupation. Travelling throughout Iraq, from the Kurdish north, to Baghdad, Falluja and Basra, he records the response of th...
How do we respond in the face of evil, especially to those who inflict grave evil upon us? Abducted in Iraq is Bishop Saad Sirop Hanna’s firsthand account of his abduction in 2006 by a militant group associated with al-Qaeda. As a young parish priest and visiting lecturer on philosophy at Babel College near Baghdad, Fr. Hanna was kidnapped after celebrating Mass on August 15 and released on September 11. Hanna’s plight attracted international attention after Pope Benedict XVI requested prayers for the safe return of the young priest. The book charts Hanna’s twenty-eight days in captivity as he struggles through threats, torture, and the unknown to piece together what little information...