Fall Of Baghdad [Hardcover]

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.
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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
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THE FALL OF BAGHDAD demonstrates -- like Anderson's incisive books on the war in Afghanistan, contemporary guerrilla movements and Che Guevara -- his knack for interviews, observations and finely crafted, powerful narratives. The great value of this book is that Anderson takes us beyond sound bites or official statements to hear the authentic voices of thoughtful, educated Iraqi civilians in interviews and vignettes that capture the chaos of wartime and its aftermath ... The haunting intenstisy of Anderson's vibrant account of his experiences is reminiscent of the best war literature ... indispensable for understanding what is going on inside Iraqi society today WASHINGTON POST Mr Anderson continues his brave reporting for THE NEW YORKER ... In this measured, keenly descriptive account, hindsight gives way to horror as the early rumblings of war become reality and the city of Baghdad is changed beyond recognition ... THE FA NEW YORK TIMES A searing portrait of a people and a city under fire ... Anderson is a fine reporter who writes like a dream EVENING STANDARD [Anderson's] articles in the NEW YORKER are often admired by other journalists for their easy flow, colour and interviews, and he has successfully translated this into book form ... but he also writes movingly about the general population and suffering GUARDIAN --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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.

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.