Land Between the Rivers

A sweeping 5,000-year history of Iraq, from the reign of Gilgamesh in c.2900 BC to the coup that overthrew the monarchy in 1958.

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Land Between the Rivers is the result of ten years of research, writing, and thinking about the subject. It is an enormous topic: five thousand years, beginning with Gilgamesh at the edge of historical time. It is a big topic in another way. More than anywhere else, the famous Land Between the Rivers, where civilization was born, where East and West have mixed and clashed since long before Alexander, has led an existence that could be called, from a certain perspective, a history of the world.

We begin the story with ancient Sumer, and Gilgamesh building the walls of Uruk ('Iraq') to make a great name for himself around the turn of the third millennium BC. We end it in 1958, as the last royal family of Iraq is slaughtered on the steps of a small royal palace in Baghdad, the most effervescent, free, and promising capital in the Middle East.

Above all, the story of Iraq, the world's hinge country, is that of the great clash pitting humanism against the outlooks of power and fate.