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(More customer reviews)In order to have a good grasp on what's happening in Iraq today, an understanding of the war in 1991 is essential. There's a fair amount of literature on the "first" gulf war, but Finlan's book would be a great place to start if you're not already familiar with the subject.
The Essential Histories series is aimed towards the beginner, with the goal of providing a short and readable account of the main issues surrounding a particular conflict. Finlan's book does a very good job at providing context to the war by covering most of the relevant angles. If the book is to be faulted for anything, it would be that it's heavily skewed towards the military aspect of the war at the expense of the political details. The political background to the war was just as important as the military one and should have been given more attention.
Finlan's treatment of the subject is objective and fair for the most part. While the book is quite short (only 84 pages of text) the purpose of the book is to be introductory, not all inclusive. The only factual innacuracy is that he attributed the 1996 Khobar Towers attack to Saudi dissidents, but it is widely known that Hezbollah, working with Iran, were responsible for the attack.
Anyone desiring a greater understanding of Iraq that doesn't know quite where to start would most likely benefit from this book. For those already familiar with Iraq and its history, this book will not provide anything new.
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The Gulf War of 1991 heralded a new type of warfare - one dominated by speed and high technology, that yielded a remarkably low level of casualties among the Allied forces. Just under a million Allied troops were deployed to the Gulf region, where they faced not only the extreme heat, but also biological, chemical and suspected nuclear threats. This book assesses both Operation Desert Storm and OperationDesert Shield, examining each forces strategies, and the political and military figures who were involved on both sides. The operational side of Desert Shield is also detailed in full.
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