9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential background for what's going on today., March 5, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq (Paperback)
I read this book, and I think it's an excellent primer on Iraq, from Churchill's mistake at its creation to the present day. It's indipensable for putting the current conflict into perspective.
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18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Proofreaders needed; or As the Chalkboard Screeches, April 3, 2003
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq (Paperback)
Much if not most of this book is helpful and provides a much needed historical review and provides a context for today's events. Mr. Tragert's handling of ancient history is adequate, but nothing a good ten minutes in an encyclopedia could not equal. His treatment of the Epic of Gilgamesh is mercifully short and he touches lightly upon the similarities between it and the Bible without falling into the trap of claiming this as proof that the Old Testament redactors borrowed this legendary material to include in their own cosmology.
I would have rated his book higher except for one glaring mistake which set my teeth on edge which is the reaction I get when someone scratches a chalkboard with their fingernails over and over again. On page 44 he says, "Like the Greeks who followed them, the Sumerian religions were pantheistic and their gods were anthropomorphic." Feeling like an idiot, I consulted another annoying feature of this book which are the little boxes that appear throughout the text with little "nuggets" of information. This one was "Desert Diction" and defined pantheism as, "...{The} belief in a group of gods where each represents a specific human action, or emotion, or a physical element, such as one for the sun, and one for the moon." Let me guess, a group of gods would be a pantheon (Greek pan means all; theos means god or gods), thus pantheon would mean all of the gods. I may be an idiot, but I am not in kindergarten. What this informational "nugget" has done is define polytheism (poly=many + theoi=gods) not pantheism. Pantheism means all is god; it equates god with the cosmos.
I do have to give Tragert credit in that he misdefines pantheism consistently throughout the book. But if his defintion is correct, then all of my dictionaries are wrong, not to mention most if not all of the authors who have written on the subject like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Aldous Huxley, etc...or I am really a Complete Idiot.
While this may seem to be a small thing, it is disconcerting nonetheless,and raises the possibility of other not quite so obvious errors and misdefintions that might slip by unnoticed. Despite these caveats and the annoying way it is set up, this Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq is worth reading and is a useful tool.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent overview of Iraq, September 26, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq (Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book--it provides a first-rate history of the country and details the rise to power of Saddam Hussein. Highly recommended!
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