Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
by Anthony Shadid
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What We're Reading:
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Anthony Shadid's Night Draws Near adds an important aspect to the
many-faced story of the war in Iraq. While books like Naked in Baghdad and One Hundred and One Days focus on the lead-up and the span of the U.S. invasion, and Thomas Hicks's new Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq zeroes in on the military blunders, Shadid takes a wider angle, observing the conflict though five stages. First is the tense set-up of Iraq under the ugly regime of Saddam Hussein; second comes the terror and confusion prompted by U.S. bombings. Part three follows the cannibal looting of museums, mosques, and public buildings, which leads into part four: the disillusionment that swept Iraqis when they were unable to return their lives to anything resembling sanity or security. The final section of the book examines how post-invasion strife and the release of years of suppressed internal feuding resulted in insurgency and the rounds of bombings that continue to plague Iraq today. Journalist Anthony Shadid was born in Oklahoma to a Lebanese-American family. His international reporting for the Washington Post won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2004, and Night Draws Near was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2005. Shadid now reports from Beirut on the continuing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Shadid's voice is both worldly and Midwestern, establishing the big picture of the war while relating the street-level stories of ordinary people. His excellent, rounded reporting, facilitated by his own fluency in Arabic, demonstrates how Iraqi attitudes about the invasion have been shaped by history and experience as much as ideology: the common people he interviews want running water and safe streets; they despise the era of Saddam, but they feel the ancient city of Baghdad deserves better treatment than it has received from American bombs. The war multiplied their daily anxieties, and the insurgency has kept those anxieties at a fevered, exhausting level. Shadid has an acute journalistic eye and is able to sketch individuals and their lives with just a few telling details. But as Night Draws Near demonstrates, his greatest strength as a reporter is his refusal to take short cuts or choose sides. The book isn't about bashing Bush or praising the war effort; it's about the Iraqi people and the human experience during wartime. It's thoughtful, it's surprising, and it's a reminder of how affecting excellent journalism can be. Review by Mark David Bradshaw July 28, 2006 Read a review of Naked in Baghdad:
The Iraq War and the Aftermath as Seen by |
