John RobertsonIraq: A History (Short Histories)

Really interesting read. Feel like i'm learning so much more than just the history of Iraq as well. I read this a while ago so my memory is vague but, for example, there's a whole chapter dedicated to Iraq as a cradle of religion (prior to that it talks about it being the cradle of civilization) which was an interesting read (I'm Atheist myself). Fascinating read for anyone who wants to understand more about a country steeped in history and culture and the development of the general area throughout history.

Very informative and good link between the old and the new Iraq after the illegal war and the destruction of the cradle of religions and civilisation.

Excellent thanks

my wife loves reading this book of the most ancient country.

Good read

I read this from cover to cover, I couldn't put it down. I feel it's done justice to a civilization that's been largely forgotten, at least in the western world, and I found it wonderful to see that history brought to life in an easy reading and engaging writing style. I rented the book from my local library earlier this year and it's truly one of the best books I've read in a long time. I hope to rent it again to have a second read, being a history lover this was an ideal read for me and it'll change the way you look at Iraq ever after.

There are many general histories of Iraq, for example an excellent one by Charles Tripp. Few, however, deal in detail with the country's very early history that goes back some 6,000 years. This is a pity because that history is rich and complex. It can teach us much that is of value today. If our policy-makers had known it it might have prevented the misplaced and botched invasion of 2003. Today that proud nation is facing dissolution as a result. There is much ignorance about Iraq. Most students studying history often know , for example, nothing of the 8 year long terrible war between Iraq and Iran that killed tens of thousands on both sides. Amazingly, there is a widespread belief that Iranians are Arabs. They are Persians or Turks.Robertson is a Professor of Ancient and Middle Eastern Studies at Mitchigan University. In this book he points out that very few of Iraq's catastrophes have been of its making. Foreign invaders lured by rich natural resources have been to blame. Thus it suffered at the hands of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, Tamerlane , the British in 1917, and the invasion of 2003, to name only a few. It has suffered far more than most of Europe or America from disruption and catastrophes. Iraq as we know it was created in 1921 by the British amalgamating three separate provinces. It was not one of our finest hours.Iraq matters. And as the author makes clear long from now it will continue to matter. To explain why he returns to Iraq's past, to when there was no Iraq. It came as a great surprise to westerners that after Saddam was toppled the people stared at the Humvees patrolling their streets. and instead of feeling they had been liberated by a superior civilised coalition acted instead as more truly civilized people. They knew, we did not, that they were the heirs of great civilizations that were incomparably older than that of the latest bunch of occupiers. Contrary to what most westerners believed, democracy and the rule of law had not been strangers to Iraq's rich and diverse history. Their land, as Robertson reminds us, was the cradle of civilization. It was where the first cities, scripts, and literature arose. Governance by law was in existence long before Magna Carta or the US Constitution. Iraq had once been the centre of a vast Muslim ruled empire that stretched from Iran across Egypt and North Africa to Spain. Unfortunately, the most the occupiers knew of the country was concerning Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba. Robertson details the scientific and architectural flowering in Iraq while London and Paris were mired in mud and squalor. It is a sobering reminder of how Eurocentric our history teaching is. In an interesting part of the book Robertson explains the development of the Arabs as a nation.Ill- informed generals and politicians who want to invade Iraq to defeat Isis ought to be force-fed this excellent book. It is objective, sane and entertaining. Robertson rightly deplores the failure to tap the country's natural gas resources, and the lake of oil on which it sits.Unfortunately, past rulers have had little regard for their people. The nation has had to suffer a succession of venal unscrupulous politicians hell bent on filling their Swiss bank accounts, it would take a brave person to predict this will change.This is not a superficial chronicling of Iraq's history from the Stone Age to Saddam. It is a magnificent examination and analysis of the country's seminal advances in human endeavour and the debt we in the West owe to its historical experience. Iraq has played a vital role in shaping the world.Recommended for those who wish to place Iraq's present problems in a wider historical context..

Good condition. Thanks

I thought this book was very good and well-written. Regarding the negative comments from other viewers regarding the author's treatment of Iraq since the US invasion, obviously some people are biased and are not capable of seeing the bad things their country has done. I am not highly knowledgeable about this subject, the only thing I would say is that it did seem the author did leave out any incriminating information showing that in regards to the problems post-US invasion Iraq has faced, there are Iraqis that bear some of the responsibility as well, in other words that their problems are not solely the US's fault.

This is an outstanding overview of the history of Iraq and the Middle East in general. There is a lot of content here which is paced nicely, but since it encompasses thousands of years of history, one can get lost in the details at times. Additionally, since it is a short history, you may be left with some questions on specifics which you will need to seek elsewhere for answers.I would recommend this work to any beginner to this area of history and to those who need a refresher. My few complaints are that the author fails to hide his bias towards past US foreign policy throughout the book which questions his objectivity at times. Additionally, there is little to mention of how the current administration has affected Iraq during the last eight years. Lastly, this is a book of the entire history of the region of Iraq, but about 1/4 of the work deals with “modern” Iraq or the twentieth century and beyond. I think more detail could have been provided on ancient Mesopotamia.Overall a great read from Professor Robertson.

Superlative, just short. The writing is so engaging it's hard to believe this is an academic history. There is enough to get the essence of Iraqi culture and how it differs from Iran and its Arab neighbors, and the only flaw is the book's modest length, I really wish the Author had more space to give us his expertise on this tragic country/civilization.

Because this book deals with six thousand years of history in three hundred pages, the author must leave out a great deal of information. He is a deft narrator, but he shows a sneering anti-American attitude and a marked leftist bias .American and British soldiers came to Iraq "as standard-bearers of self-proclaimed great countries, cradles of liberty, freedom, and democracy, countries that were the embodiment of “good” and “civilization.”" The author wants to call the invasion a fraud, but what would he do about Saddam's well-documented record of aggression, evasion on nuclear efforts and cruelty in governance?"Since as far back as the third millennium BCE, Iraq has suffered disruption and at times catastrophe at the hands of alien migrants, foreign invaders, and conquerors, from mountain tribesmen sweeping into the Mesopotamian floodplain around 2250 BCE, to Alexander the Great’s phalanxes in the fourth century BCE, to the Mongol Khan Hulegu’s horde in 1258, to the European and American occupations from World War I to Operation Iraqi Freedom. " Many other invaders could be mentioned, as he recognizes elsewhere. Why specifically are Mongols bracketed with the recent Americans and Brits? Does he want to suggest that Americans, like Mongols, ransacked Baghdad?The author gives Islamic doctrine more space than seems appropriate. Muhammad appears as a sort of proto-socialist and a great believer in justice. "Muhammad’s insistence that there was only one true God obviously threatened the status of the Ka’ba, and therefore the profits of the local elite, who began then to persecute Muhammad’s followers." The author momentarily ignores that there were plenty of Jews (monotheists of course) living among the Arabs. (And how does monotheism cut into anybody's profits?)There is a crisp and fast-paced narrative of the confusion of peoples who swept over the Middle East from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries. All were Muslim, or became Muslim, except for the Crusaders. (They are not among the disrupters previously listed.) After World War the Ottoman empire was divided into Mandate territories, i.e., examples of what is now called "state-building", meant to gain independence once the League of Nations recognized that they could stand alone. Under its Mandate, Iraq was turbulent and became more so in the 1930's.. There were numerous rebellions and massacres of various minorities, such as Jews and Christians, without public indignation. Iraq sided with Nazi Germany during World War II. After the Mandates ended, there were numerous coups and coup attempts.After World War II, the Ba'athist ideology (Arab nationalism plus socialism) became the predominant political movement in Iraq. The problem with Ba'athism was that it enabled the growth of a "shadow government" of insiders, a kind of Mafia, which became the vehicle for the ascent of Saddam Hussein. The author spends no time on the harmful aspect of the Ba'ath, apparently considering it as a legitimate vehicle of Arab national pride. (My information on the shadow government is from 'Iraq' by Charles Tripp.)In fact, the only really major villains in the author's account are the Brits and Americans. Above all they are greedy for oil, even if this has been the greatest source of wealth for the Iraq. Even the American-led invasion of 2003 was supposedly motivated by oil. But this does not explain why the Coalition stayed in Iraq even after the country had been secured. It just wasn't possible to set up another Ba'athist and continue business as usual. It was the entire party, not just Saddam, that had to be subdued; hence L. Paul Bremer's "de-Baathification" effort and the expulsion from government of all Baathists. Saddam and his friends had accumulated too long a record of villainy. The author hints at this. "If Iraq’s history since 1932 is any guide, it remains uncertain whether a cohesive, sustainable, truly inclusive “Iraqi” identity that all of the people of Iraq can buy into can be built to last over the long haul."