Good Book on Iraq?

Wilfred Thesiger’s “Marsh Arabs,” which was published in 1964, is a classic, certainly not dry. The book is rather poignant, given the fact that it concludes 4 years before Saddam launched a coup and became a dominant force in the Baathist party. He later drained the marshes after the first Gulf war, after the US incited Shiites in the south to rise up against the dictator. Marsh Arab culture was annihilated.

Rory Stewart’s “Prince of the Marshes” is excellent. He was a British administrator in southern Iraq, during the early days of the current occupation—he was in his late 20s and fluent in Arabic. His chronicle is very well written, with an eye toward the history and culture of the region. He’s understandably critical of the catastrophe of the American-British intervention, despite the fact that he was, for all intents and purposes, a well-intentioned colonial overlord, trying to get warring clans to make peace.

The Shi’is of Iraq by Yitzhak Nakash

“Irak pieklo w raju” by Pawel Smolenski, if you happen to know Polish ;)

“The fall of Baghdad”
The Penguin Press
Ny 2004
John Lee Anderson

Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq by Ahmed S. Hashim. It summarizes very well how the social dynamics of the Iraqi people have led to the current climate over there.

Assassin’s Gate, by George Packer

Packer was the New Yorker correspondent covering the war for several years and his writing is never dry. In some ways it is the sequel to Jon Lee’s excellent book.

Anything by or about Freya Stark, who was a late British empire adventuress, she was to the Middle East what Rebecca West was to the Balkans, or some such…

Something I just dug up from an old memory: “Travels in Mesopotamia: Including a Journey from Aleppo, Across the Euphrates to Orfah,(the Ur of the Chaldees) Through the Plains of the Turcomans, to Diarbekr, in Asia Minor; from Thence to Mardin, on the Borders of the Great Desert, and by the Tigris to Mousul and Bagdad: with Researches on …”
By James Silk Buckingham, 1827

“Seven Pillars Of Wisdom” TE Lawrence, no introduction needed for that…

David McDowall’s “Modern History of the Kurds” is thick but easy to read and really interesting for the Kurdish perspective on Iraqi politics that’s usually brushed over

If you want to “understand” Iraq, you need to read the Qur’an

If you want to understand more about the last years and the thinking of the people before and after the war read the great book:

Jon Lee Anderson: The Fall of Baghdad