User:Qst/The Fall of Baghdad

The Fall of Baghdad is a 2004 non-fiction book by American author John Lee Anderson.

Mixed reception.

About the author
Jon Lee Anderson was born on January 15, 1957 in California, United States. Anderson was brought up and raised and educated in South Korea, Colombia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Liberia, England and the United States. His media career began in 1979 as a journalist for the Lima Times in Peru and continued throught the 1980s, working for Time, Life, Harper's Magazine and The Nation. He currently is employed by The New Yorker as a staff writer and resides in England with his wife and three children.

Content
The book contains an account, as wrote by Anderson, of the events and catastrophes which were happening in Baghdad during the early stages of the Iraq War. The earliest part of the account begins in August 2002. Throughout the book, Anderson gives accounts from interviews and Iraqi civilians on the street.

http://etude.uoregon.edu/winter2005/books/baghdad.html

Reception
Brian MacQuarrie of the The Boston Globe wrote that the book "provides a fascinating look at life in the Iraqi capital as it awaited the devastating firepower of the most powerful military machine on the planet," concluding that the book is book is a "highly personal account of the war." The Village Voice called it a "a riveting book that retains the visceral immediacy of the original pieces while also building cumulative resonance." John W. Chambers of The Washington Post wrote that Anderson "artfully captures the often surprising ambiguity and complexity in human relationships between Iraqi civilians and Americans in Iraq." British newspaper The Guardian gave both positive and negative comments about the book, commenting that "one of the weaknesses of Anderson's book is that the fall of Baghdad, in the end, turned out not to be an epic siege. The question then is whether there is enough to justify 400 pages," additionally noting that "on the whole, though, there is not enough in the book about the Iraqis, especially the poorest, in part because western journalists' contact with the Iraqi population was often so difficult."

In a review by Salon.com, Ann Marlowe reviewed the book negatively, believing that "Anderson's lack of sensibility, emotional and aesthetic, looms large because this isn't a book in which much happens." , adding that "too often, Anderson approaches the English language as a blunt instrument that he must wrestle with — sometimes unsuccessfully — to make his point."