Author Description

*Covers the history of Iraq from its time as part of the Ottoman Empire to today. *Explains the political, religious, ethnic, and cultural differences within Iraqi society. For much of the past 30 years, Iraq has been one of the world's greatest hotspots. The 1980s saw Ba'athist strongman Saddam Hussein go to war with Iran, as well as the Kurds, who maintained an autonomous region of their own in northern Iraq. Hussein's invasion of Kuwait touched off a Gulf War that was followed by biting sanctions. And the 2003 American led invasion against Hussein's regime provided the uninformed an all too brutal crash course on Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, and the Middle East's as a whole. For several years, thousands of American soldiers died while fighting both Sunni groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and Shiite militias affiliated with Iran, all while the Sunnis and Shiites targeted each other across the country. Americans became all too familiar with places like Fallujah and names like al-Sadr and al-Zarqawi. Today many people know more about Iraq than they ever wanted to know, but how did Iraq get to where it is today, at the forefront of global affairs? The history of Iraq stretches back thousands of years, all the way back to the ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, and like other Middle Eastern nations, the modern state of Iraq was forged through several turbulent decades following World War I, the disbanding of the Ottoman Empire, and conflict with imperialistic Western powers. The History of Iraq, 1900-2012 comprehensively and descriptively covers this history, progressing through a timeline to explain how the modern state of Iraq was formed and explaining the religious, ethnic, and cultural differences within Iraqi society. The History of Iraq will bring you up to speed on one of the world's crucial countries today.