Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military Is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq [Hardcover]

Karl Zinsmeister (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

An up to the minute report on America's most urgent national struggle, as seen through the eyes of the U.S. servicemen and Iraqis who are striving to build a new country in the most dangerous place on earth.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Karl Zinsmeister spent three months embedded in combat zones with US soldiers during the first year of the Iraq war. Zinsmeister is editor in chief of The American Enterprise, a national magazine of politics, business, and culture. He is also the J B Fuqua Fellow at Washington DC's American Enterprise Institute. His writing has appeared in publications like the Atlantic Monthly, Reader's Digest, the Wall Street Journal, and even a Marvel comic-book series of real-life soldiers' tales. A graduate of Yale University and Trinity College, Dublin, and a former assistant to US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he has testified before Congressional committees and Presidential commissions numerous times, and appears regularly on television and radio programs. Karl Zinsmeister lives with his wife and children in rural upstate New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 237 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594030502
• ISBN-13: 978-1594030505
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,307,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Karl Zinsmeister is now completing two new books--a memoir, and a regional culture book.

From 2006 to 2009 Zinsmeister served in the West Wing as President George W. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser. His responsibilities stretched across many issues:  the mortgage and student-loan credit crises, improving care for military veterans, the formulation of  new immigration policies, stem-cell and biotechnology innovation, school reform, issues in health, transportation, environmental quality, national competitiveness, and so forth.   


For nearly 13 years Zinsmeister was editor-in-chief of The American Enterprise, a national magazine of politics, business, and culture based in Washington, D.C. Author and former Cabinet Secretary William Bennett called it "one of America's finest magazines.... intellectually interesting, well-written, lively, wide-ranging, and above all useful."


Zinsmeister is the author of several books, including two influential Iraq War journals written during lengthy stints when he was embedded with infantry troops in urban war zones:  Boots on the Ground (2003) was the first book published by an embedded journalist; Dawn Over Baghdad was published in 2004 to describe the beginning of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort. At the invitation of Marvel Comics, he also wrote a non-fiction graphic novel entitled Combat Zone (2005) that chronicled the actions of actual American soldiers.


In concert with his wife Ann, Zinsmeister conceived and produced a feature documentary film entitled Warriors that aired nationally on PBS in 2007. The film presented personal profiles of America's fighting forces, via on-the-scene footage he and two cameramen shot in Iraq. It received major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.


Zinsmeister's work has been published in many national publications--from cover stories for The Atlantic Monthly and features in Reader's Digest to essays in the Wall Street Journal.

A graduate of Yale University, Zinsmeister did further studies at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. During college he won rowing championships in both the U.S. and Ireland. He was a U.S. Senate aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been an adviser to many groups, and has testified before Congressional committees and Presidential commissions.   


He originated a weekly radio commentary syndicated nationally to 100 stations, and has appeared often on a wide variety of national television and radio programs. He has lived, worked, or traveled in 40 countries, and nearly every U.S. state. He holds the highest U.S. security clearance.


Zinsmeister is married and has three children. He is an avid photographer, sings in his church choir, is an active gardener, and keeps hens. Old houses and woodworking are a personal love (he has restored seven 100-or-more-year-old homes). He delights in the outdoors, and bicycles, sculls, kayaks, skis cross-country and downhill, and enjoys extended wilderness backpacking trips.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only in America, June 27, 2004

By 

bid - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military Is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq (Hardcover)

Great book. Fascinating reading, and very helpful to me personally.

I?m not a political animal, and have to admit I was sorta neutral about the Iraq war. Until these latest beheadings. They?ve reminded me that these people are not going to go away, and are not going to leave us alone if we just mind our own business. Paul Johnson was a good neighbor and worker just minding his own Ps and Qs in Saudi Arabia, and that didn?t matter a bit to the fanatics who killed him like a dog just for being an American.

So I decided I better get up to speed on what?s going on in Iraq. One Google search later I ended up at Amazon scanning the reviews on this book. Overnight delivery. Then I start to read--and find out this book covers events that took place just a few weeks ago. How the publishers got it published so fast I have no idea.

Moral: What a country! I decide I want some accurate, non-government information on a big issue of concern. One day later I?m reading. Two days later I?ve got a whole head full of powerful new information, direct from an honest eyewitness source, at the tip of my tongue.

Not exactly like Saudi Arabia.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It won't convince anyone..., July 12, 2004

By 

Steven Martinovich (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military Is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq (Hardcover)

It won't convince anyone who has already made up their mind that the war against Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime was a mistake but Karl Zinmeister pens a convincing argument that things are getting better in Iraq and most people there are happier these days. Of course it's not all chocolate and sunshine. Although he's confident that Iraq can pull itself together and make a convincing go at democracy, Zinmeister several times hints he's concerned about elements in the Sunni minority that seem hell-bent on fighting the transformation of Iraq.

That said, Dawn over Baghdad is a persuasive work that makes you question what you've been seeing on the network news every night. We're all aware of the old newsroom mantra "If it bleeds, it leads" but the fact that the media is unwilling or unable to show the other side of post-war Iraq is an indictment on that institution. Dawn over Baghdad is a good effort at balancing out the public record.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real, Powerful, Different, Brilliant, June 27, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military Is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq (Hardcover)

The night I got this book I read it straight through. I suffered the next day at work, but I couldn?t stop. And I don?t regret it. It was a thrilling night, and?more importantly?this book has changed the way I look at my country.

I?m an attorney, so I work a lot with evidence. I interact regularly with police officers, plenty of anti-social criminals, judges. And I?ve come to suspect over the last year, as a gut feeling, that much of the reporting we get from Iraq is just plain bent. Too many inconsistencies, too many gaps, too little context, too selective, too much hysteria, ALWAYS NEGATIVE. If you?ve had a similar sinking feeling, you will definitely find it interesting to read this book.

Very different from the skin-deep treatments of the Iraq fight that I?ve been able to find before now. The author is rational, clear, brutally direct, and writes about some fascinating stuff. I don?t know how he got to sit in on some of these things. Or, more accurately, I don?t know why lots of other reporters haven?t bothered themselves to sit in on events to observe as broadly and carefully as he has.

I?ve been starving for direct, first-hand, unfiltered information that gets beneath the body counts and the superficial ?Paul Bremer did this? politics. And I don?t think the fault heretofore has been mine?I?ve been scouring magazine racks and bookstores for a year. This book is full of what I?ve been hungry for?good storytelling about real lives and actual results.

There are scads of historical studies and learned theses on the Middle East out there now. There are whole forests of bulletins on what happened today in Baghdad. But until I read this book I could find no one who combined eyewitness information from right in the midst of the Iraq whirlwind with some deeper perspective and wisdom than the average journalist brings to his ten-paragraph daily story.

I don?t know anything about Zinmeister?s background (I?m about to read his previous book on Iraq next), but I can tell you he writes with a novelist?s eye and an historian?s judgment. He?s very blunt and unsentimental, and occasionally fiery, so don?t read this to put yourself asleep. But if you want to rev up your thinking on America?s Public Topic #1, here?s some tasty caffeine.