Customer Reviews

Iraq: An Illustrated History and Guide

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I was in the PX at Camp Arifjan looking for a book on Iraq before heading there, just so I can learn a little more about the people I'm going to be working with and training. There was only one selection, and although I have been able to gleam some useful information between the anti-American diatribe every other paragraph, I wish I had not wasted my money and passed it by. And I wish the PX had a better selection of books on Iraq.

Two earlier reviewers have already noted the Frenchman author's anti-American bias in condeming the ousting of Saddam Hussein in Gulf War II, and in blaming the looting of Iraq's museums on the American soldiers, rather than on the Iraqi civilians themselves. Regarding Gulf War I, the author leaves the impression that the Allied Coalition set Kuwait's oil fields afire rather than Saddam. This paperback does profile many historical sites (most of them just mounds of rubble nowadays), but there are just a couple of rough travel-guide maps as to how to get somewhere. This paperback has a few photographs, but it should not be considered a major (let alone a minor) photograph book on Iraq. While the paperback details some city's importance 1500 years ago, the author fails to mention whether or not the city still really exists today and if anything remains even to be seen there. Based on this paperback, one would hate to drive out into the desert for many miles, only to find merely a pile of broken mud-bricks and no petrol to return. As a more important companion book, one needs to carry along "Iraq: The Bradt Travel Guide" for information regarding maps of cities, and possible hotel and restaurant accomodations.

This guide to Iraq has some wonderful photographs, but the text is larded with anachronistic assertions and factual errors. For example, on page 11, Munier gives the dates for the Sumerian civilization as between 3500 to 2350 BCE, and then a few lines later says that the Sumerians had "agricultural knowledge that produced an improved, iron plow". That's pretty amazing, since the Iron Age and the smelting of iron in the region didn't begin for another 1100 years! It's the equivalent of saying that the MP3 player was introduced in the Middle Ages. Other absurdities abound, especially when Munier begins covering the more recent history of the country and his admiration for the former regime begins to show. If you want good photographs, it might be worth the money, but ignore the text: let's hope better guidebooks to Iraq are soon produced!

Did you know that every bad thing that's ever happened to Iraq in its 8,000-year history is the fault of the United States? You would think that if you read this book. It seems as if every other page has to find something to make an anti-American comment, especially concerning the damage and destruction to historical sites and artifacts. The author even blames the United States for the looting of a Basrah Museum during the Gulf War One in 1991... which, as I recall, was never occupied by the Coalition during that conflict.

While the book has great facts about many of Iraq's ancient sites, almost everyone one of these is punctuated by a line about "gunfire damage" or "bomb damage" or "looting" at these sites. Even the Mongols don't get as bad a treatment and they made pyramids out of the skulls of Baghdadis when they invaded Iraq. Yes children, before America Iraq NEVER was invaded or harmed by outsiders.

The historical summary is helpful but a chronology of the main period of Iraq's dynastic periods would have been helpful as well.

The book includes a whitewashed bio of Saddam, which fails to mention the killing fields, his televised purge of the government, or even his role as secret policeman during the first Ba'athist revolution in 1963.

The book even whitewashes the now totally-discredited food-for-oil program, failing to mention why sanctions were in place.

The only saving feature of this book are some of the great photos. There definitely better books out there.