In good conscience, I do not recommend this book. With "Undoing Saddam," Bowen had every opportunity to provide a groundbreaking account of civil affairs operations in a historical and monumental undertaking. Instead, he delivers what constitutes a bad imitation of a Fodor's travel guide.

Having spent most of a year in Mosul with the 101st Airborne Division during OIF, I expected to find Wayne Bowen's account a journey into familiar territory. Rather than provide an insightful account of a remarkably bold and creative effort to bring peace and stability to one of the world's oldest and richest cultures, Undoing Saddam quickly devolves into an inane collection of personal observations, lavishly illustrated with a seemingly endless collection of posed photographs of the author. These observations range from the peculiar (a statistical profiling of the number of American soldiers who regularly attend religious services) to the obtuse (the author repeatedly pointing out that he doesn't "drink and never has") to the downright banal (his belief that the black beret is "the most useless piece of headgear ever invented"). Readers expecting a consistent theme will instead find a disturbing religious undercurrent that can be interpreted as nothing less than a surreptitious attempt by the author to proselytize his faith.

Even more disturbing, however, was the complete dissociation of his observations and efforts from the tactical situation in Nineveh province. At a time when Mosul and the surrounding area were increasingly the focus of effort for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda in Iraq, the author fails to note even the slightest change in the security situation and only mentions al-Zarqawi in passing as a "Sunni terrorist" inspiring jihadists to launch attacks in the name of Islam. In those rare moments when he appears on the verge of making a worthy observation (such as the delicate and vital relationship between actions on the ground and the legitimacy of Coalition reconstruction efforts), it is typically lost somewhere in the telling or sacrificed altogether to point out his concern that soldiers don't spend enough time in church services.

While such errors of omission can often be the result of inexperience, the same cannot be said for the writing itself. Undoing Saddam suffers from a combination of overly dramatic writing and generally slipshod editing. The author tends to use many of the same clichés throughout the book ("I was stunned" appears to be a personal favorite), while the editor failed to correct inconsistencies in terminology (a terrorist and an insurgent are not the same thing), unit designations (there is no "101st Infantry Division"), and dates, times and places. This is all surprising since the publisher has a long and distinguished reputation for producing very well-written and edited material.

Save your money. There are any number of books on the conflict and ongoing efforts to provide peace and stability to the people of Iraq. Buy one of those.

This is an excellent book with two titles. One of the titles ("Undoing Saddam") is misleading, since this book isn't about Saddam Hussein. The other title ("From Occupation to Sovereignty in Northern Iraq") reveals what the book is really about.

The author, Wayne Bowen, is a history professor at a university in Arkansas who happens to also be a major in the Army Reserve. In 2004 he was sent to Iraq for a year, and his diary became this book. Most of what we hear about Iraq either comes from scholars and pundits in America (who have spent little, if any, time in Iraq), or from soldiers on the ground in Iraq (who don't have a deep understanding of Iraqi history and culture). As a history professor and a soldier, Bowen is able to understand both the history and culture of Iraq on an abstract level _and_ witness what life for real Iraqis is like.

As a result, this book is indispensible for the people running the United States -- and yes, that includes the voters too! You won't find a lot of exciting battles in this book, because Bowen was stationed in Mosul after the conquest. What you will find is a picture of what it's like to _rebuild_ Iraq after the war. And it's _this_ project that the American voters need to understand in order to know what we should do in Iraq in 2008 and beyond.

Some of the stories in the book are utterly tragic. Major Bowen spent a lot of time overseeing the rebuilding of schools and colleges in Mosul -- making sure that the Kurds were allowed to attend school -- making sure that libraries are stocked with books despite the carnage of war and the omnipresent threat of violence. The army relied on Iraqi translators to get their work done -- and therefore the terrorists targeted these translators as "collaborators". These Iraqis, whose only crime was trying to make their country better, are killed, and Bowen is forced to lament their deaths and then try to find new translators (who, understandably, are increasingly reluctant to side with the Americans). Even more heartbreaking for me, as an American, is to read how when these translators _do_ risk their lives to work with the Americans, and then ask for small favors, they are turned down. One pro-American Iraqi teacher wanted to travel to America to get a master's degree, and yet the State Department rejected her visa application for no good reason. Bowen writes, "I cannot fathom why the teacher failed to gain visa clearance. Her profile hardly speaks of danger to the United States. When she cried over the phone, as I delivered the news to her, my heart broke."

Bowen also informs his story with political and military analyses. Although he supports the war, he has harsh words for the way in which the Bush Administration conducted the war, and especially for how it conducted the rebuilding. The Iraqi people needed to be treated with respect, and we should have helped them rebuild their country. Instead, the rebuilding contracts were given to G.E., Halliburton, Bechtel, and other big American corporations -- who then focused their efforts on rebuilding the _safe_ parts of Iraq, foresaking the dangerous parts. But it is precisely these dangerous parts where destroyed roads need to be rebuilt and out-of-work Iraqis need to be given jobs.

I opposed the war when it started, and I still think it was a mistake to undertake this war. But Bowen's book has convinced me that we cannot leave Iraq today. Too many Iraqis have risked their lives to join the Americans in their effort to rebuild Iraq as a stable, free, and democratic state. We must honor these friends of ours -- not by treating them as tools like many in the current Administration have, nor by bringing all our soldiers home and abandoning these people to be killed by the terrorists, but by modifying our current Iraq strategy so that the country can be made strong, stable, and free. Whoever is in charge of American foreign policy needs to read this book!

As a memoir, Bowen's book specifically addresses his experience, encounters, and contemplations about his time in Iraq. By providing an American perspective, it allows the reader to "piggyback" and also experience some of the culture shock and concerns that he expresses. The book expresses a great deal of compassion for the people of Iraq and is interested in them as people, not merely as "civilians" or some other impersonal category. In fact, my overall impression of the book is about the people of Iraq, not of a war or a political situation, although they are also present.

I found this book completely approachable and engaging, have recommended it to several friends, and plan on incorporating information I've learned from it when teaching future courses. This work assumes that the reader is an intelligent layperson, not a war buff or scholar on the region. It would make an especially good supplementary text for an advanced high school class or a freshman/sophomore class.