Customer Reviews

Gulf War Reader: History, Documents,Opinions

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I am writing a term paper on the Gulf War and even though you can have up to 5 sources this is basically the only book I need! It has everything I need to know! If you are doing research like myself, I suggest you check it out!

The Gulf War Reader is a good place to start for anyone unfamiliar with the conflict. You'll get a basic overview of the issues surrounding the war from a variety of ideological dispositions. The book does seem tilted towards more liberal interpretations of the war, but the bias of each contributor is on the whole easy to determine.

While the book is full of contributions from many different perspectives, most pieces are relatively short. This makes for an easy and quick read, but by the end of the book it's easy to find yourself wanting a more in-depth treatment of the issues surrounding the war. That being said, if you have no prior background on the war, pick this book up and then move on to some of the major books like Gordon & Trainor, Hiro, and Khadduri

This book is filled with documents and accounts that should interest anyone whom seeks information about the Gulf War. I enjoyed reading this book, and I found it extremely informative. Much of the information I had not known, nor had I come across in previous readings.

Understanding the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 requires awareness of the war the US and others fought to eject Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. This collection of articles written during the crisis and the war itself is certainly helpful, even for those who remember the war well. Included are speeches and statements by George Bush and Saddam Hussein; articles by well-known pundits and foreign-policy specialists (Henry Kissinger, Bernard Lewis, Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Anthony Cordesman) as well as by people less noted for foreign-policy analysis (Ariel Dorfman, Barbara Ehrenreich, et al.). One inevitably learns much from the anthology. I would particularly recommend Joe Conason's essay on US and western business ties with Iraq before the war; Murray Waas's piece on the US "tilt" toward Iraq during its war against Iran in the 1980s; and Rep. Stephen Solarz's argument for war. All three of those pieces make their case very compellingly. My main complaints are: 1) an excess of articles by columnists and others with little expertise, often with rather weak, unoriginal, rambling, or uninsightful things to say; 2) an excess of American commentators (the anthology includes several very useful pieces by Arab and Muslim writers, but there are still far more Americans in the anthology, and very few Europeans or others); 3) a clear preference for anti-war and left-wing voices. Although the book's cover advertises it as an anthology of diverse viewpoints, the reality is that the left-leaning editors could not resist packing the book full of anti-war viewpoints, which far outnumber anything else. It is interesting, however, to read the many contemporary predictions that proved mistaken. All in all, the book is well worth reading, but a better anthology could easily have been assembled.