Three Kings in Baghdad

Three Kings in Baghdad

Author: Gerald De Gaury

Publisher: I.B. Tauris

Published: 2008-03-30

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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The first king of Iraq, Faisal I, was installed by the British in 1921 - he was pro-British, and was thus deemed 'suitable' to lead an independent Iraq. But his successors - his son Ghazi and Faisal II - both met their demise in suspicious and bloody manners. This book is a unique and timely account of Iraqi history.


Three Kings

Three Kings

Author: Lloyd C. Gardner

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2011-04

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1459617754

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Three Kings reveals a story of America's scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Lloyd Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region to offer the first history of America's efforts to supplant the British empire in the Middle East. From the early efforts to support and influence the Saudi regime (including the creation of Dhahranairbase, the target of Osama bin Laden's first terrorist attack in 1996) and the CIA-engineered coup in Iran to Nasser's Egypt and, finally, the rise of Iraq as a major petroleum power, Three Kings is ''a valuable contribution to our understanding of our still-deepening involvement in this region'' (Booklist).As American policy makers and military planners grapple with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Gardner uncovers the largely hidden story of how the United States got into the Middle East in the first place.


A History of Iraq

A History of Iraq

Author: Charles Tripp

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-05-27

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780521529006

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This updated edition of Charles Tripp's A History of Iraq covers events since 1998, and looks at present-day developments right up to mid-2002. Since its establishment by the British in the 1920s Iraq has witnessed the rise and fall of successive regimes, culminating in the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Tripp traces Iraq's political history from its nineteenth-century roots in the Ottoman empire, to the development of the state, its transformation from monarchy to republic and the rise of the Ba'th party and the ascendancy of Saddam Hussein.


Three Kings

Three Kings

Author: Lloyd Gardner

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2009-11-10

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1595585338

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As American policy makers ponder a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq, one of our preeminent diplomatic historians uncovers the largely hidden story of how the United States got into the Middle East in the first place. A breathtaking recovery of decisions taken, brazen motives, and backroom dealings, Three Kings is the first history of America's efforts to supplant the British empire in the Middle East, during and following World War II. From F.D.R. to L.B.J.,this is the story of America's scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region, chronicling the early efforts to support and influence the Saudi regime (including the creation of Dhahran air base, the target of Osama bin Laden's first terrorist attack in 1996), the CIA-engineered coup in Iran, Nasser's Egypt, and, finally, the rise of Iraq as a major petroleum power. Here, the tangled threads of oil, U.S. military might, Western commercial interests, and especially the Israel-Palestine question are visible from the very beginning of “The American Century”—a history with frightening relevance for the distant prospect of peace and stability in the region today.


Iraq Between the Two World Wars

Iraq Between the Two World Wars

Author: Reeva Spector Simon

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2004-06-09

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0231507003

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Why did a group from the Iraqi army seize control of the government and wage a disastrous war against Great Britain, rejecting British and liberal values for those of a militaristic Germany? What impact did these actions have on the thirty-year regime of Saddam Hussein? Departing from previous studies explaining modern Iraqi history in terms of class theory, Reeva Simon shows that cultural and ideological factors played an equal, if not more important, role in shaping events. In 1921 the British created Iraq, and an entourage of ex-Ottoman army officers, the Sharifians, became the new ruling elite. Simon contends that this elite, returning to an Iraq made up of different ethnic, religious, and social groups, had to weld these disparate elements into a nation. Pan-Arabism was to be the new ideological source of unity and loyalty. Schools and the army became the means through which to implant it, and a series of military coups gave the officers the chance to act in its name. The result was an abortive revolt against Britain in 1941. And the legacy of the revolt is still apparent in the next two generations of Iraqi officers that led to the regime of Saddam Hussein. This updated edition locates the sources of Iraqi nationalism in the experience of these ex-Ottoman army officers who used the emergent pan-Arabism to weld a disparate population into a nation. Simon shows that the relationships forged between Iraqi officers and Germans in Istanbul before WWI left deep legacies that go a long way toward explaining the disastrous war against Great Britain in 1941, the rejection of liberal values, the revolution of 1958 in which the military finally seized power, and the outlook of the leadership recently overthrown by American and British armies.


The Reckoning

The Reckoning

Author: Sandra Mackey

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9780393324280

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An account of the forces-historical, religious, ethnic, and political-that produced Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.


Baghdad

Baghdad

Author: Justin Marozzi

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 0306823993

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Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the history of its storytellers and its tyrants, of its philosophers and conquerors. Here, in the first new history of Baghdad in nearly 80 years, Justin Marozzi brings to life the whole tumultuous history of what was once the greatest capital on earth.


Land Between the Rivers

Land Between the Rivers

Author: Bartle Bull

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2024-09-10

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0802162517

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The epic, five millennia history of the region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that was the birthplace of civilization and remains today the essential crossroads between East and West At the start of the fourth millennium BC, at the edge of historical time, civilization first arrived with the advent of cities and the invention of writing that began to replace legend with history. This occurred on the floodplains of southern Iraq where the great rivers Tigris and Euphrates meet the Persian Gulf. By 3000 BC, a city called Uruk (from which “Iraq” is derived) had 80,000 residents. Indeed, as Bartle Bull reveals in his magisterial history, “if one divides the 5,000 years of human civilization into ten periods of five centuries each, during the first nine of these the world’s leading city was in one of the three regions of current day Iraq”—or to use its Greek name, Mesopotamia. Inspired by extensive reporting from the region to spend a decade delving deep into its history, Bull chronicles the story of Iraq from the exploits of Gilgamesh (almost certainly an historical figure) to the fall of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 that ushered in its familiar modern era. The land between the rivers has been the melting pot and battleground of countless outsiders, from the Akkadians of Hammurabi and the Greeks of Alexander to the Ottomans of Suleiman the Magnificent. Here, by the waters of Babylon, Judaism was born and the Sunni-Shia schism took its bloody shape. Central themes play out over the millennia: humanity’s need for freedom versus the co-eternal urge of tyranny; the ever-present conflict and cross-fertilization of East and West with Iraq so often the hinge. We tend to view today’s tensions in the Middle East through the prism of the last hundred years since the Treaty of Versailles imposed a controversial realignment of its borders. Bartle Bull’s remarkable, sweeping achievement reminds us that the region defined by the land between the rivers has for five millennia played a uniquely central role on the global stage.


Three Worlds

Three Worlds

Author: Avi Shlaim

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2023-06-08

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0861544641

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In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing from their beloved Iraq into the new state of Israel. Now the rump of a once flourishing community of over 150,000, dating back 2,600 years, has dwindled to single figures. For many, this tells the story of the timeless clash of the Arab and Jewish civilisations, the heroic mission of Zionism to rescue Eastern Jews from their backwards nations, and unceasing persecution as the fate and history of Jewish people. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His mother had many Muslim friends in Baghdad, but no Zionist ones. The Iraqi Jewish community, once celebrated for its ancient heritage and rich culture, was sprayed with DDT upon arrival in Israel. As anti-Semitism gathered pace in Iraq, the Zionist underground may have inflamed it – deliberately. This memoir celebrates the disappearing heritage of Arab-Jews – caught in the crossfire of secular ideologies.