Steve Coll is known for writing masterful nonfiction books about the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. This one is no exception. It provides a gripping look into the history of Saddam Hussein's relation with the United States. Relying on American and Iraqi original documents, Coll explains how Saddam Hussein became America's enemy number one after 1990. In addition to brilliantly describing the geopolitical environment, Coll provides the reader with a detailed account of Saddam's personality and mindset. He paints the mesmerizing picture of a brutal dictator who used chemical weapons against his own population and attacked neighbors, and was always strongly anti-American and anti-Semitic. At the same time, Coll demonstrates convincingly the shortcomings of U.S. policy toward Iraq that eventually led to George W. Bush's fateful decision to invade that country in 2003.
“Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times
“Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post
"Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air Mail
From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news-breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time
I do not specialize in U.S. history. I therefore picked up Rob Harper’s book because I wanted to read about a history I knew less about. Listening to it, I was impressed with the level of detail and nuance with which he deals with such a sensitive topic as the colonization of the Ohio Valley. Harper shows the complexity of the relations between Indians and colonists at the crucial time when Indians were increasingly dispossessed of their lands. Despite the violence which characterized the period, local collaborations existed and both colonists and Indians were fragmented groups. I also enjoyed the writing style. Harper vividly depicts the actors from the period. He makes the reader feel as if they were themselves taking part in some of the encounters between colonists and Indians happening in the Ohio Valley. Due to the amount of information, it provides, the book was slightly a tough read for someone who had like me little prior knowledge about the region.
The revolutionary Ohio Valley is often depicted as a chaotic Hobbesian dystopia, in which Indians and colonists slaughtered each other at every turn. In Unsettling the West, Rob Harper overturns this familiar story. Rather than flailing in a morass, the peoples of the revolutionary Ohio Valley actively and persistently sought to establish a new political order that would affirm their land claims, protect them against attack, and promote trade. According to Harper, their efforts repeatedly failed less because of racial antipathy or inexorable competition for land than because of specific state policies that demanded Indian dispossession, encouraged rapid colonization, and…
That is a great history book about a poorly known topic. Robert B. Rakove provides a minutious description of the intricacies of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan from the Second World War prior to the Soviet military intervention in that country in 1979. I really enjoyed how his narrative seamlessly weaves together the aspirations and actions of a multitude of American and Afghan actors, large and small. Relying on many new archives, Rakove’s book tells a unique story of Soviet and American competition in one of the border states of the Cold War, also highlighting Afghan agency in playing one superpower against the other.
Long before the 1979 Soviet invasion, the United States was closely concerned with Afghanistan. For much of the twentieth century, American diplomats, policy makers, businesspeople, and experts took part in the Afghan struggle to modernize, delivered vital aid, and involved themselves in Kabul's conflicts with its neighbors. For their own part, many Afghans embraced the potential benefits of political and commercial ties with the United States. Yet these relationships ultimately helped make the country a Cold War battleground.
Robert B. Rakove sheds new light on the little-known and often surprising history of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan from the 1920s to…
The book discusses how communism failed in Afghanistan. It tells the story of how the Soviets came to Afghanistan with communist ideology in hand. The Soviets believed (wrongly) that they would get support from Afghans because they were bringing them the benefits of communist modernity and progress.
The book looks specifically at Soviet and Afghan communist policies on Islam because the Soviet opposition to religion served as a litmus test for their reformist project. The Soviets did not believe that Afghan traditions and Islam were important, considering these to be archaic and primitive. In that, they were massively mistaken. It was only after six years of fighting that they finally understood that their reformist project needed to be adapted to the context.
