The Fall of Baghdad

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The press coverage of the second Iraq war was notable for the American military's program assigning journalists to be "embedded" with specific military units. While this afforded more personal coverage, the reportage was inherently narrow, missing out on the larger perspective of a sprawling and complex situation and telling stories only from the American troops' point of view. Such is not the case in The Fall of Baghdad, journalist Jon Lee Anderson's harrowing account of the Americans' capture of the Iraqi capital. Anderson was not embedded but on the ground in Baghdad and recounts the increasing anxiety and dread of Iraqi citizens as they try to prepare as best they can for a seemingly inevitable invasion. Not only were the Iraqis fearing for their lives, dwelling as they did in what they knew to be the largest target city in the nation, they also lived in fear of Saddam Hussein while he was still in power and so projected a facade of desperate optimism and unfailing loyalty. Anderson chronicles the collapse of this feigned allegiance and the Iraqi people's joy of being free of Saddam but also reports hints of the kind of anti-American sentiment that would come to deadly fruition in the months following the end of conventional fighting. Additionally, Anderson tells of the journalists covering the war, who struggled with the conflict between their drive to tell the story of what was happening and their desire to stay alive. Anderson keeps the scope of his book limited to the situation within Baghdad, omitting any mention of the larger political issues related to the war, which means that the book is not only non-partisan and highly focused but also incredibly claustrophobic, capturing the feeling of being trapped in a city about to be devastated. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
New Yorker writer Anderson's eyewitness account of the invasion of Baghdad is a thoughtful document of war, written with stunning precision. Anderson arrived in Baghdad during the eerie calm before air strikes began in March 2003. While questioning ordinary Iraqis about their country's future, he also traveled to Iran, where he interviewed war-weary Shiite Iraqi refugees. Back in Iraq, Anderson sought out members of Saddam's Baath Party and probed the ambiguous nature of their relationship with their dictator: Ala Bashir, a plastic surgeon and artist who was close to Saddam, provides Anderson with a character study rich in contradiction. Equally compelling is a poet named Farouk, whose accounts of cocktail parties under Saddam have, in Anderson's recounting, a tension and irony reminiscent of Cold War Hitchcock thrillers. Anderson also makes his openly anti-Saddam driver, Sabeh, a key character and a link to Iraqi quotidian culture. In a voice refreshingly free of machismo, Anderson proffers an inside view of war reporters' scramble to cover events and of life at the Rasheed and Palestine hotels, where most journalists stayed. In this original narrative (not a collection of his New Yorker pieces), Anderson's unobtrusive voice mediates the voices of others faithfully and with humanizing integrity, resisting any impulse to convert what he observes into political argument. Instead, he collects grimly cinematic snapshots of Iraqi casualties that will haunt readers even after the invasion has receded into history. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Anderson, who has covered the war in Iraq for the New Yorker, offers an account of the events and factors that led to the war and its still-uncertain aftermath. Anderson interviews Iraqi government officials, insurgents, and U.S. military officials. But his interviews with ordinary Iraqis are most revealing of the impact of the war, the occupation, and why Iraq threatens to become such a quagmire for U.S. foreign policy. Beginning with a portrait of life for Iraqis deeply fearful of the cruel and eccentric Saddam Hussein, Anderson details their tentative support for overthrowing Hussein but also their deep skepticism of American motives and of the possible involvement of Israel. The violence and destruction of the war, and growing disappointment after the toppling of Hussein didn't lead to improvements in everyday life, set the stage for rising tension and resistance. Anderson chronicles the ongoing violence, ambushes, and kidnappings that continue to characterize the occupation. This is a riveting look at the ill-conceived strategy to topple a dictator and reduce terrorism. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Publishers Weekly, starred review, July 5, 2004
Anderson's eyewitness account of the invasion of Baghdad is a thoughtful document of war, written with stunning precision.

Kirkus Reviews, starred review, July 2004
First-rate frontline reportage, full of luminous and eye-opening details.

BusinessWeek, October 11, 2004
The account is a must-read for anyone trying to understand the anarchy that is now engulfing Iraq.

Book Description
For every great historical event, seemingly, at least one reporter writes an eyewitness account of such power and literary weight that it becomes joined with its subject in our minds-George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and the Spanish Civil War; John Hersey's Hiroshima and the dropping of the first atomic bomb; Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories of Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide. Whatever else is written about the Iraqi people and the fall of Saddam, Jon Lee Anderson's The Fall of Baghdad is worthy of mention in this company. No subject has become more hotly politicized than the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, and so a thick fog of propaganda, both from boosters of the war and its opponents, has obscured the reality of what the Iraqi people have endured and are enduring, under Saddam Hussein and now. For that reason alone, The Fall of Baghdad is a great and necessary book. Jon Lee Anderson has drawn on all of his reserves of stamina and personal bravery to create an astonishing portrait of humanity in extremis, a work of great wisdom, human empathy, and moral clarity. He follows a remarkable and diverse group of Iraqis over the course of this extraordinary time: from the all-pervasive fear that comes from living under Saddam's brutal, Orwellian rule to the surreal atmosphere of Baghdad before the invasion; to the invasion's commencement and the regime's death spiral down into its terrible endgame; to America's disastrously ill-conceived seizure of power and its fruits. In channeling a tragedy of epic dimensions through the stories of real people caught up in the whirlwind of history, Jon Lee Anderson has written a book of timeless significance.

Download Description
"From New Yorker contributor Jon Lee Anderson comes The Fall of Baghdad-a masterpiece of literary reportage about the experience of ordinary Iraqis living through the endgame of the Hussein regime, its violent fall, and the troubled American occupation. For every great historical event, seemingly, at least one reporter writes an eyewitness account of such power and literary weight that it becomes joined with its subject in our minds-George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and the Spanish Civil War; John Hersey's Hiroshima and the dropping of the first atomic bomb; Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories of Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide. Whatever else is written about the Iraqi people and the fall of Saddam, Jon Lee Anderson's The Fall of Baghdad is worthy of mention in this company. No subject has become more hotly politicized than the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, and so a thick fog of propaganda, both from boosters of the war and its opponents, has obscured the reality of what the Iraqi people have endured and are enduring, under Saddam Hussein and now. For that reason alone, The Fall of Baghdad is a great and necessary book. Jon Lee Anderson has drawn on all of his reserves of stamina and personal bravery to create an astonishing portrait of humanity in extremis, a work of great wisdom, human empathy, and moral clarity. He follows a remarkable and diverse group of Iraqis over the course of this extraordinary time: from the all-pervasive fear that comes from living under Saddam's brutal, Orwellian rule to the surreal atmosphere of Baghdad before the invasion; to the invasion's commencement and the regime's death spiral down into its terrible endgame; to America's disastrously ill-conceived seizure of power and its fruits. In channeling a tragedy of epic dimensions through the stories of real people caught up in thewhirlwind of history, Jon Lee Anderson has written a book of timeless significance. "

About the Author
Jon Lee Anderson is the author of Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World; Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life; The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan; and, with his brother Scott Anderson, War Zones and Inside the League. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker.


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A reporter's notebook documents life in Iraq before and during the current war. It seems telling, if strange, that Saddam Hussein's so-called Triumph Leader Museum-devoted to himself, naturally-contained trophy cases full of gifts from foreign leaders: "a pair of decorative riding spurs which, according to the museum labels, were a 1986 gift from Ronald Reagan; a collection of guabayera shirts from Fidel Castro . . . ceremonial swords from Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Zhirinovsky." Hussein's hold on Iraq, suggests New Yorker correspondent Anderson (The Lion's Grave, 2002, etc.), owed much to such legitimating kindness, enabling the dictator to lord it over his people with astonishing comprehensiveness. And with considerable leeway: on receiving 100 percent of the vote in the last election, Anderson writes, Hussein freed all but a few inmates from the now doubly notorious Abu Ghraib prison, saying that they were no threat to anyone; explained prime minister Tariq Aziz, "We are like Jesus Christ, who pardoned the people who crucified him." Hussein was anything but Christlike, though, says Anderson, who suggests that Iraq did indeed have the WMDs that have so far eluded Western investigators-and, moreover, sheds no tears for the fall of the tyrant. Still, and interestingly, his pages are full of veiled warnings from Iraqis about what lies in store for any would-be occupier-"If you do anything in Iraq, do it quickly," says one-and, ominously, about what lies in store for the world should Islamic fundamentalism replace secular government. Anderson's descriptions of the American "shock and awe" attacks on Baghdad are stunning ("Saddam's palace complex was littered with the smoking hulks ofbombed buildings. I noticed that Iraqis did not gather to stare at the damage, but cast fleeting, sidelong looks at it"), though his account of events subsequent to the invasion will disquiet anyone who supports a continued American presence there: as he suggests at the close, "a year after the fall of Baghdad, it seemed as if the city had not really fallen at all. Or, perhaps it was still falling. "First-rate frontline reportage, full of luminous and eye-opening details."


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