War reads

Election season is coming and Iraq rhetoric will be humming. Get your facts and perspective in order now | Mindy Belz

A year ago respected Johns Hopkins scholar Fouad Ajami mused, "You go to war with the press you have." Reporters in Iraq have been more attuned to the politics of the beltway than of Baghdad, too confined to the Green Zone's spin zone, and largely uninformed about the densely woven history of Iraq from the time of Abraham, a history that includes not only Sunni and Shiite elite but Jews, Nestorian Christians, Persians, and a league of other people groups. The result, according to Ajami: "a literary yield [that] has so far been a literary desert."

With facts on the ground improving plus political change in the Washington wind, the documented record of a five-and-a-half-year war told by its scribes is more vital than ever. Out of the morass of journalistic memoirs, the apologetics from scholarly experts of left and right, the soldiers' stories, and the armchair bloggers, a few gems emerge. Judging from the mail and questions received by WORLD, never before has a U.S. war been so eagerly discussed and its actualities so stubbornly misunderstood. These volumes each offer unique perspectives along with a measure of relief from propaganda and cliché.