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Iraq, the cradle of civilization, the land between two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, was once the center of wisdom and humanity’s greatest inventions. It is the land where writing began, where zero was introduced into mathematics, and where the tales of The Thousand and One Night were first told. Iraq was the first State in the Middle East to gain independence. Here you find a list of the best books about Iraq that help you better understand a country with great potential but burdened by severe international and domestic conflicts.
The 20th century in Iraq had its ups and downs. In the 1970s, Saddam’s Iraq was a prospering center of culture that turned into a place of bloodshed and violence during the war with Iran and after the invasion of Kuwait in the first Gulf War. It suffered under the heaviest sanctions ever imposed by the UN on a country.
Despite the elimination of Saddam’s dictatorship, the ethnic and religious conflicts of the country pose a constant obstacle to creating unity among the Shia, Sunni, Kurd, Turkmen, and Assyrian communities.
1. Bradt Travel Guide: Iraq – the best travel guide about Iraq
This is a very comprehensive and the only existing travel guide currently available that every traveler must read before planning a trip to Iraq. The country made a huge step to revive tourism in Iraq by easing the procedure to get a visa for several countries as of March 2021. This travel guide gives an overview of ancient Mesopotamia, the modern history, and religions existing in Iraq. More importantly, it is a detailed guide about the historic places and touristic attractions of whole Iraq, including the semi-autonomous Kurdistan. You also get advice on the best time to travel to Iraq, updates on safety, recommended accommodation and travel itineraries.
2. Åsne Seierstad: A Hundred And One Days: A Baghdad Journal – an excellent book about a journalist’s life in Iraq
The Norwegian journalist and war correspondent was assigned to cover the second Gulf war in 2003 aimed to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. While many journalists of reputed international news channels left the country, she tells her story of how she got back to Iraq to witness when the American troops dropped the first bombs on Iraq.
“The days pass interviewing people who won’t talk, translated by interpreters who won’t cooperate, in a country where eyes and ears are everywhere. Never in my life have I worked under such difficult conditions. Not because there is no water in the tap or a threat of guerrilla warfare. Nor the difficulty in sending articles home. The problem is that there is nothing to send.” – says the journalist about being constantly supervised and accompanied by the government’s minder.
Despite severe censorship and an intimidated population, she finds a way to grasp Iraq’s pre-war atmosphere and daily life. Many Iraqis see no other choice than to leave the country, while others must stay. Some support President Saddam, while others look forward to the American bombings that will finally explode the “shithole” they lived in, even if it is the not very much liked United States. After some consideration, she decides to stay and report on life in Iraq after the first shelling.
3. Nadia Murad: The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State
It is a must-read and one of the best books about Yazidi people’s incredible hardships during ISIS. As opposed to Christians who got free escape or could pay a fine, ISIS considered the Yazidi people as infidels as they did not have a holy book. Thus, they could be systematically raped, sold as sex slaves, and even killed. Yazidis have suffered injustice for a long time and were among Iraq’s poorest communities.
Yazidis don’t marry outside the community and cannot convert to other religions. Large families ensured that they didn’t die out.
ISIS attacked the villages near Sinjar driving thousands of Yazidis out of their homes and toward Mount Sinjar. Those who refused to convert to Islam or tried to flee were killed. Tens of thousands of Yazidis were marching with their livestock to the mountain, with hundreds of men being slaughtered. Boys and young women were kidnapped and later taken to Mosul or Syria. Older women, women my mother’s age, were rounded up and executed, filling mass graves. Most Yazidis finally made their way through Kurdish Syria to a refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.
ISIS militants confiscated their homes and killed the men, but the worst was that they raped Yazidi women and traded them as property. They had to convert to Islam. Women preferred killing themselves to losing their virginity because it made it impossible for them to return to society.
The UN officially recognized what ISIS did to the Yazidis as a genocide. Reading the story of Nadia Murad, a survivor of the IS genocide, is shocking and touching at the same time.
4. Jeffrey, Shaker: Shadow on the Mountain: A Yazidi Memoir of Terror, Resistance and Hope
It is the personal story of a Yazidi man, Shaker, who meets the American troops as a teenager in 2003. He starts by serving them drinks but then learns English and becomes a military interpreter like many others. However, his Yezidi origins pose extreme risks, including a high price on his head. It was when kidnappings, ransom demands, murders, and armed robberies were routine all over Iraq. The Americans leave eight years later, and he continues his studies. He planned to finish school and get to America through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program.
But after Syria, ISIS extended its Caliphate to Iraq in the blink of an eye in the summer of 2014, and “Mosul fell like a plane without an engine”. Yezidis were either forced to convert to Islam or were killed. They marched through the Sinjar mountains in masses without food and drink, many of them dying on the way to the safe pace, Iraqi Kurdistan. Shaker Jeffrey becomes the connection between the US military and the Yezidi victims. He provided valuable information about the location of ISIS and enslaved Yezidis, went back and forth between refugee camps and Germany to save the lives of around a thousand Yezidi people, and even infiltrated ISIS. Still, his beloved woman fell victim to the terrorists. The risk he undertook becomes apparent when he survives a murder attempt in Germany.
It is a fascinating and informative read about the Yezidi people’s horrific fate during the ISIS invasion and a courageous man who acted as a hero to save the life of hundreds of his fellow sufferers.
5. Anderson Liam: The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division?
If you want to learn more about the British interference, the country’s creation, the subsequent political changes, and the internal conflicts in Iraq, this is a highly recommended read for you.
The book reveals the intractable fault lines between the Arab and Kurdish minorities or the religious-based tension between the Sunnis and Shias that make it so hard to create unity in Iraq despite the fall of Saddam. The way foreign powers outlined the borders of Iraq created incessant internal conflicts that remained the biggest challenge a hundred years later.
This is one of the best books about Iraq’s modern politics, the rule of Saddam, the Gulf wars and their aftermaths, and the ethnic-and religion-motivated challenges.
If you are interested in reading about other countries in the Middle East:
6. Norman Solomon, Reese Elrich: Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You
It is one of the best books about the highly contested Iraq war of 2003 when the U.S. created false accusations to get the UN resolution allowing him to attack and topple Saddam’s regime.
They launched Operation Desert Storm, well-knowing that Iraq had no proven link to the events of 9/11. President George W. Bush searched for a pretext to launch a war. The media stated Iraq did not cooperate with the UN supervisors to reveal its nuclear and chemical weapons. Some estimate the number of Iraqi people who died to be over 100,000.
The Iraqi people bore the consequences of the sanctions imposed on the country for failing to cooperate: massive undernutrition, diseases, a shortage of medicine, and poor health service.
There were also plenty of congenital disabilities in Iraq and childhood cancers because of the bullets the Americans and the British used.
This book reveals some secret facts and stories behind what the public was told through the media and what happened in reality. It is one of the most insightful books about the Iraq war.
7. Khidhir Hamza: Saddam’s Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda
Khidhir Hamza, a key scientist of the Iraqi nuclear program, reveals his life under the Saddam regime and all the details about what tricks they used to get close to developing a nuclear bomb despite international sanctions. He spoke up after escaping the horror and brutality of the Saddam era. He risked his life to get out of the country, hoping that the crucial information he possessed and his qualification would grant him and his family a right to resettle abroad.
Hamza got a scholarship in Boston and did his doctorate in Florida. When the Baath party got into power in 1968, they asked for Hamza’s service for the generous state support. They threatened to jail his family back in Iraq.
He worked under firm supervision. A slight hint of treason or criticizing the dictator could be fatal. He traveled several times abroad to purchase spare parts and installations for the secret program. Several scientists were killed in France and Switzerland by the Mukhabarat.
Some Iraqi agents pretended to be immigrants whose family was executed by Saddam to get asylum. After that, they opened a bank account and received money to buy equipment and companies. The regime also recruited scientists in Russia, impoverished after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Other scientists contributed without knowing it.
It is a highly fascinating read about the nuclear program, a top priority of the Saddam regime.
8. Stephen Mansfield: The Miracle of the Kurds: A Remarkable Story of Hope Reborn in Northern Iraq
Iraqi Kurdistan is a semi-autonomous region in Iraq that hardly finds any reason to be united with the rest of Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurdish people became victims of chemical weapons, were shot, starved, or tortured to death. However, only two decades later, the western press called the intense economic revolution the “Kurdish Miracle”, and it became the hope of the Middle East.
The Investment Law of 2006 declared that foreign investors and their capitals are treated equally. This enabled foreigners to start a business, own land, and invest freely.
Iraqi Kurdistan shows a different image now with the newly built world-class airport, five-star hotels, office towers, newest cars, luxurious restaurants, lovely city parks, and gorgeous monuments. Young Iraqi Kurdish people have access to high-standard English education.
The Kurdish warriors, called the Peshmergas, took up arms and pushed back the ISIS soldiers, making Iraqi Kurdistan safe again. After a turbulent history, Iraqi Kurdistan turns up as a new touristic destination.
If you read one book about the history and presence of Iraqi Kurdistan, this should be the one. It gives a great insight into everything worth knowing about its religion, politics, challenges, and Iraqi Kurdistan’s relation to Iraq.
Read my other articles about the Middle East:
9. Jean Sasson: Mayada, Daughter of Iraq: One Woman’s Survival Under Saddam Hussein
This book is the account of Mayada, born into a prominent family in Iraq. One of her grandfathers was Sati al-Husri, a renowned Arab nationalist who helped establish Arab states like Syria and Iraq. Her other grandfather was A’far Pasha al-Askari, who served twice as Iraq’s prime minister.
Despite his family never having joined the ruling Baath party, they were respected and seemingly protected in Iraqi society. She operated a printing house and worked as a journalist for the Saddam regime, once even getting the chance to interview “Chemical Ali”, the mysterious and cruel person behind Iraq’s biological weapon.
One day, she got arrested for allegedly printing anti-regime leaflets, and despite her denial, she was jailed in a notorious prison of Saddam. She encounters the injustice her cellmates faced and the cruelty that defined the Saddam era. Thanks to her family’s influence, she gets released and escapes to Jordan as many others did.
This is an excellent book about the constant danger people lived in, things that happened in prison, and the corruption they faced even after being released.
10. Paul Kriwaczek: Babylon
It is one of the best-appreciated books about the history of Mesopotamia. It summarizes the series of civilizations and developments from Eridu till the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great of Persia for 2500 years. The author writes about all that in an easily digestible way bringing up correlations in modern history. The book reveals people’s changing relation to Gods, the most important archeological findings, the construction of the unique sacred buildings called ziggurats, and the ethnic communities that inhabited Mesopotamia starting with Semitic and non-Semitic groups with the change of language they used.
Uruk is considered the world’s first true city, with countless inventions. This is also where writing started, and the first type of the wheel was invented. The cylinder seals were one of the most beautiful of Uruk’s inventions, and the image they produced are invaluable for archeologists envisioning daily life in ancient Mesopotamia.
The artifacts excavated from the royal graves of Ur are almost as significant as the treasures of Tutankhamon’s tomb. The world’s legal code, the Code of Ur-Nammu, also comes from Ur.
Babylon was one of the leading civilizations of Mesopotamia and probably the one most remembered in modern times due to the Hanging Gardens, the Tower of Babel, and the Code of Hammurabi are some wonders of Babylon associated with that.
Nebuchadnezzar revived the city and made it the largest, the most splendid city the world had ever seen. It was in the Babylonian academies that the Babylonian Talmud was created, the text that shapes Judaism to this day.
There are many more interesting facts that you can learn from this book about the great civilizations and inventions of Mesopotamia.
11. Wilfred Thesiger: The Marsh Arabs
Wilfred Thesiger was a son of a British Consul-General in Ethiopia, served as a British soldier, and became a reputed explorer and travel writer who discovered the Arabian Peninsula in the footsteps of T.E. Lawrence. He shares his experiences of living among the Marsh Arabs in the southern wetland of Iraq as a first European in the 1950s. It was a time when oil explorations had not entirely modernized the country yet, and there were still some wild places to be explored.
In the Mesopotamian Marshes, local tribes built their houses from reeds resembling bamboo. The indigenous tribes raised water buffalo, planted rice, and fished when water was still abundant in fish. The Marshlands had been the cradle for human civilization 5,000 years ago.
The drainage of the Marshlands caused enormous disasters. Saddam Hussein stated that the establishment of a canal was to gain agricultural lands and expand oil exploration. However, the use of chemical weapons, mass arrests, and torture against the Shia population of the wetlands were more of an answer to the Shia uprising in 1991. The chemical attack destroyed most of its unique flora and fauna.
The Marshlands are now recovering, and a significant part was re-flooded. Some of the displaced Marsh Arabs returned to rebuild their villages, but many more did not.
Wilfred Thesiger takes us back to the times when the Marsh Arabs still lived in a peaceful atmosphere secluded from civilization.
12. Wallach, Janet: Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
Gertrude Bell was in service of the British Government, using her extensive knowledge of the Arab world to provide up-to-date information on the changing political situation.
In the years following World War I, Gertrude Bell was considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire. Newspapers worldwide proclaimed her the “Uncrowned Queen of Iraq” and the “Queen of the Desert.”
Based on her advice, they outlined the borders of independent Iraq, and she advised T. E. Lawrence during his journey. They agreed that the most capable man to become the king was Emir Faisal, the son of the Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Faisal was a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohamed and, therefore, a legitimate leader for Shiites and Sunnis.
Miss Bell became part of the inner circle of King Faisal and helped in everything from designing the Iraqi flag to writing the constitution, founded the archaeological museum in Baghdad, and wrote the Laws of Antiquities.
Gertrude Bell was an outstanding woman with extraordinary achievements in a time when being a household woman was the norm. She was the first woman to earn a first-class degree in Modern History at Oxford and wrote several books about her adventures and observations. However, it is astonishing that Gertrude Bell was active in the anti-suffrage movement. She said that most women were not equal to men and thus their votes could be harmful.
Read this book to learn about the Queen of the desert, who did nothing less than creates modern Iraq.
13. Matthew Bogdanos: Thieves of Baghdad
Colonel Matthew Bogdanos initiated an investigation with his team in 2003 to regain the looted collection of the Iraq Museum, one of the largest archeological collections in the world. The museum has artifacts from ancient Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations from the 5,000-year-old history of Mesopotamia.
There were plenty of copies in the collection, as Saddam took several times and hid the objects in different places around Iraq, but 40 out of them were invaluable. The thieves stole 40 of the most valuable pieces, carefully selecting them, not touching the copies and the less valuable ones.
Eleanor Robson, professor in Oxford, a member of the Brit Archeological Society:
“This is a tragedy of such volume that only past tragedies can be compared to that, like putting the Alexandrian library on fire in the 5th century.”
15 objects out of the 40 most valuable were retrieved, including the most valuable pieces: Warka vase, Warka mask, Bassetki statue, Assyrian ivory headrest from the 9th century BC, one of the two Ninhursag bulls.
By promising full amnesty, many people returned the stolen treasures within days. They usually said that they were only guarding it.
14. James Verini: They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate
In June 2014, the expansion of the Islamic State entered a new epoch by seizing Mosul, which was five times bigger than their Syrian headquarter, Raqqa. It was the trophy of ISIS. After conquering the cities of Anbar, including Fallujah and Ramadi, they turned to Mosul instead of Baghdad, the capital.
ISIS got official control over Mosul on July 4, 2014, when Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Iraqi branch of ISIS, climbed the minbar at the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul and proclaimed the existence of the Caliphate and himself its Caliph. All that happened with little fight and resistance. Mosul only got liberated three years later.
Mosul is a cosmopolitan middle-class city of almost two million inhabitants, with rich history and attractive districts. It is also home to one of the region’s best universities.
Many people were forced to flee, but still, many more remained under the administration of the Caliphate. If they tried to escape, they were killed. The bridges linking the right and left banks exploded, making it impossible to get from one part of the city to the other. Most children stopped going to school for years. Religious minorities were forced to convert, had to leave, or were killed. There was no electricity and water for long months, and the infrastructure collapsed. The situation was the worst in the old city of Mosul.
Being a strong opponent of the Maliki government, ISIS was partly welcomed by the Moslawis in the beginning. They collected donations for the poor, lowered the rents, arranged the cleaning of the streets, fixed the sewers, and built new roads.
They started to recruit them by promising houses, cars, and a salary higher than the government could give. Some believed in the cause, and others were looking for a competitive salary.
But this changed soon when public executions started, videos of beheadings, dismemberments, and burnings-alive became viral, and they restricted daily life. Women could only wear loose black abayas, black burqas and chadors, black gloves and black shoes. The Caliphate disabled all communication and forbade mobile phones and movies.
This book gives a touching insight into life in Mosul during the ISIS that made indescribable destructions in its monuments and caused enormous suffering for its people.
15. Rajiv Chandrasekaran Rajiv: Imperial Life in the Emerald City
The Green zone or international zone was the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the American occupation administration in Iraq during the second Gulf war of 2003. It was the former palace area of Saddam Hussein. He created an enclosed area at the riverfront with luxurious villas, government buildings, shops, and even a hospital. All that to avoid mingling with the masses. Here everything was nicer, cleaner, and greener, with no street vendors and beggars.
The Americans converted the area into a “Little America” with all the amenities where Iraqi laws and customs didn’t apply. Women jogged on the sidewalk in shorts and T-shirts, and a liquor store sold imported beer, wine, and spirits. Most Americans lived in a bubble, and those who dared to go outside and talk to locals called their home “The Emerald City”.
The life outside the gate was in sharp contrast to that. More than half of working-age men were unemployed, and there was a shortage in everything: electricity, medicine, food. Suicide car bombings were so frequent that many Iraqis stopped leaving their homes unless they absolutely had to. But the Emerald City felt nothing out of that. It wasn’t connected to Iraq’s electrical transmission grid. It was believed to be a 100% safe zone until the attack on the al-Rasheed hotel.
The Americans proudly set up a Governing Council based on ethnic quotes among Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Christians, and Turkmen in a country that hadn’t focused on ethnic and religious divisions before the war. It was probably the biggest mistake of the invaders, who continued praising their “mission” to set up a Western-like democracy in Iraq. This had irreversible consequences on the Iraqi society, who started to identify themselves by race and sect, leading to civil war.
It is one of the best books about life during the Iraq war of 2003 and from the American perspective.
16. Kim Ghattas: Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry that Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
This book is not about Iraq but about the most important events that shaped the Middle East, created cooperations and turned countries against each other. The recently published book of the Dutch-Lebanese BBC reporter is one of the best books about the Middle East that helps you understand the region’s complexity, regardless of which country is your focus.
The author makes the heavy topic easily digestible through anecdotes, human stories, and sharing cultural aspects. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, of course, a momentous event that shaped the region’s political scene.
She emphasizes that 1979 was a crucial year in the Middle East that affected the later events and relations. The Islamic revolution dethroned the Shah in Iran; extremists seized the Holy Mosque in Mecca, demanding the removal of the Al Saud dynasty, and the Soviet occupation also started this year.
The author covers the Lebanese civil war, the war between Iraq and Iran, the emergence of Al Qaida, the global fight against terrorism after 9/11, the spiraling effects of the Arab Spring, and the latest events.
The Islamic State expanded its territories in Syria and Iraq and radicalized tens of thousands of young people. The assassination of Qassam Suleimani, the high-ranking commander of the Iranian elite forces, and the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at his country’s embassy in Istanbul made headlines not a long time ago.
If you want to have a clear view of the region, it is a highly recommended book to read.
17. Stephen M. Rasche: The Disappearing People: The Tragic Fate of Christians in the Middle East
This book is the accounts of Stephen Rasche on his work in the service of the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq to provide shelter, food, and medicine to displaced Christian people. He states that the Christian minority is now on the verge of extinction in the land where they had been present since the earliest times of Christianism. There were between 1.3 and 1.5 million Christians in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003. It reduced to 500,000 before ISIS began its genocidal campaign. Today they amount to 150 000. During the last five years, Christians of Iraq left the country in masses.
Sectarian tension turned even more violent when Sunni Al-Qaeda in Iraq blew up the al-Askari Shrine, one of the holiest sites for Shia, in Samarra in February 2006.
When ISIS seized Mosul, most Christians (Chaldean and Syriac Catholics, Orthodox, Assyrian, and Armenian) from the Niniveh region fled to Erbil in Kurdistan.
Stephen Rasche tells about the donators that they depend on, the method of humanitarian assistance, and the challenges they faced.
I hope this list of the best books about Iraq helps you get a better insight into the history, culture, and life of Iraq. It is one of the countries that apart from the wars, we hardly know anything about. Now, as it opens up for tourists, it is essential to know more about Iraq, a wonderful country in the Middle East. If you have any suggestions about other books to be added to the list, please leave a comment!
by Agnes Simigh
I’m a passionate tour guide and travel writer, who is curious to discover places that seldom catch the attention of the media or that are misrepresented. My goal is to inspire you to choose off-the-beaten-track destinations by sharing objective and detailed information. I believe that it is mainly the lack of “intel” that keeps us away from incredible places. And that just shouldn’t be the case.
