THE WARS AGAINST SADDAM

By no means the first Saddam book and certainly not the last, but this is John Simpson, the BBC's World Affair's Editor, and it's a safe bet that of all the Saddam books past, present and forthcoming this will be one of the better reads. He's urbane, wears his learning lightly and writes in much the same way as he delivers copy to camera, which is to say clearly, engagingly, and with just the right number of rhetorical flourishes. There can be a problem with books about contemporary history. Sometimes they lack historical perspective. A broader context can be missing due to limited access to official documents. And there are a lot of them about. But John Simpson was there at the fall of Saddam, has the shrapnel wounds to prove it, and, like any good correspondent, can always be relied on to tell it like it was.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.