Iraq War Books

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
Rajiv Chandrasekaran , Sept. 2006, 330pp.
• A 24 year old beginning realtor was hired to reorganize the Iraqi stock market because he voted for Bush -- if this were fiction, it would be the comedy of the year. Amazon

Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam
Robert Dreyfuss, October 2006, 400pp.
• From Eisenhower to Iran-Contra to support of jihad against Russia in Afghanistan, the US financed and trained, as protection against communism, the very groups we now fight. Amazon

The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach
The Iraq Study Group, James A. Baker III, Lee H. Hamilton ,
Dec 6, 2006, 160pp.
• This official edition contains the Group’s findings and proposals for improving security, strengthening the new government, rebuilding the economy and infrastructure, and maintaining stability in the region. Amazon

State of Denial: Bush at War, Part 3
Bob Woodard, 9/30/06, 576pp.
• With Pentagon reports forcasting increasing violence replaced by statements predicting continued success, Woodard reveals how the administration has avoided seeing the truth about the war in Iraq. He also describes former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, designer of the Vietnam disaster, as a regular advisor to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush. Amazon

In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq
Nir Rosen, May, 2006, 288pp.
• Rosen has interviewed insurgent leaders, religious leaders, and numerous ordinary Iraqis. If you want to know what’s really going on, this is the book.
Amazon

The Israel-Palestine Conflict : One Hundred Years of War
James L. Gelvin, 8/05, 304pp.
• Gelvin interweaves biographical sketches, eyewitness accounts, poetry, fiction and official documentation into his narrative of Middle East conflict. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century in Palestine, it traces the evolution and interactions of the two communities from their first encounters up to the present. Amazon

The One Percent Doctrine
Ron Suskind, 06/20/06, 384pp.
• The Cheney doctrine: if there was "a one percent chance" that a threat was real "we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence." Suskind describes Cheney's version of reality. Amazon

Saudi Arabia Exposed : Inside a Kingdom in Crisis, Updated Edition
John R. Bradley, May 2005, 256pp.
• An Arabic speaking journalist, Bradley lived in Saudi Arabia for 2 1/2 years, among the Saudis, not in a compound. He describes and documents a country divided by religious traditions, wealth, education, and sex, and controlled by the Al-Saud family through the strict and powerful Wahhabi clergy. It is a country torn between the tempting, despised, but still-necessary West and the strictest of Muslim fundamentalisms. Amazon

Overthrow
Stephen Kinzer, April 4, 2006, 400pp.
• April 4, 2006. The US has been changing regimes for 100 years. Excepting when it makes them part of the US, like Hawaii, things usually go wrong. Ike was proud of toppling Iran's democracy in the 1950s. Read this before the next disaster in Iran. Amazon

The Battle for Peace : A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose
Gen. Anthony Zinni, Tony Koltz, April 2006, 256pp.
• General Zinni argues that the roots of the world's growing turmoil are not being addressed and that America's aggressive confidence is making it worse--with potentially devastating implications for the safety of Americans. (April, 2006) Amazon

Cobra II : The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor, March 14, 2006, 640pp.
• Cobra II: The best inside account of what went wrong with the Iraq war. A new best seller by a NY Times reporter and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general. Amazon

America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order
Stefan Halper, Jonathan Clarke, June 21, 2004, 382pp.
• America Alone: Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. Fair-minded and fascinating. This book is a damning indictment of neocons and the Iraq War by mainstream Republicans with long experience in government. Amazon

My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope
L. Paul Bremer, Jan. 2006, 417pp.
• My Year in Iraq is Bremer's review of Bush-style "nation building," the drafting of Iraq's interim constitution, and the secret dialogue he carried on with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. And, with belated candor, he details the failings of the occupation. Amazon

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War
Andrew Bacevich, Feb 28, 2005, 270pp.
• New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War
Andrew Bacevich, a graduate of West Point, a retired military officer, and a moderate conservative, describes how Evangelical leaders found common cause with the neocons and provided the political muscle for Reagan and his successors of both parties. A thorough examination of American foreign policy and where it came from. Amazon

Squandered Victory : The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq
Larry Diamond, June 2005, 309pp.
• Details the preventable blunders and missed opportunities, from Bush's giving the Pentagon the lead managing postwar Iraq to our inability to work with Iraqi leaders such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Diamond expresses admiration for US Administrator L. Paul Bremer, who sincerely wanted to bring democracy to Iraq, but was wholly unprepared and unrealistic, resulting in "one of the major overseas blunders in U.S. history." Amazon

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
Michael Scheuer, July 2004, 309pp.
• An excellent book on Al-Qaeda and the threat America is facing. The author cuts through all the Democrat versus Republican debate and gets to the point—Al-Qaeda has not been defeated, they will strike again, and the Neocon's Iraq war is not addressing this threat. Amazon

The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power
George Soros,
• Why the "Bush Doctrine" is a disaster. Amazon

Disarming Iraq
Hans Blix, March 9, 2004, 304pp.
• Hunting for weapons in Iraq Amazon

Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry
P. W. Singer,
• Brookings scholar on privatizing the military and its profit potential. Amazon

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Steve Coll, 2/23/04, 720pp.
• Politics as confusion and self-delusion. Amazon

Inventing Iraq
Toby Dodge, November 2003, 260pp.
• The British invented Iraq in 1920. Bush is following their (unsuccessful) path closely and doing it faster. Amazon

War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
Chris Hedges, June 2003, 224pp.
• War, like a drug, makes life richer, more exciting Amazon

David Fromkin
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East,

• How the West created the Middle East after World War I Amazon

All the Shah's men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
Stephen Kinzer,
• NY Times reporter tells of US regime-change in Iran Amazon

The Middle East: a Brief History of the Last 2000 Years
Bernard Lewis, July 1997, 448pp.
• 2000 years of (unsuccessful) resistance to outside rule does not make imposed democracy popular Amazon

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror
Bernard Lewis, March 2003, 224pp.
• Thirteen centuries of the theological Islamic thought collide with secular western dominance Amazon

Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War
Richard Atkinson, contribution by Brad Wye, Sept. 1994, 500pp.
• Atkinson: the realities of the Persian Gulf War Amazon

A History of the Modern Middle East
William L. Cleveland, Jan. 2000, 592pp.
• the last 200 years of changes in the Middle East Amazon

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Modified: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:53:17 GMT