History of Iraq: From Inventing Civilization to the Modern Failed State

This book examines the history and political trajectories in Iraq, from early Mesopotamia and the invention of civilization in cities such as Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Nineveh, to the creation of writing, astronomy, laws, scribes, administration, city-states, and the early agrarian settled communities. The book also observes the impact of Islamic conquests, the golden era of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongol invasion, and the negative impact of the Ottoman-Persian rifts on the population. Then, the book observes the creation of the Iraqi modern state of Iraq by Great Britian in 1920, the subsequent political regimes that governed it, the country's ethnic and religious make up, the Iran-Iraq War, the two Gul Wars, the U.S. invasion in 2003, and the current political dynamics of a dysfunctional and corrupt administrative state struggling to maintain the integrity of a failed state from disintegrating into separate fiefdoms divided on ethnic and sectarian lines. Finally, the book examines the effect of Iraq's future disintegration on the Middle East and the competing regional and international forces.