Land Between the Rivers

‘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. 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.