I feel that I have been sleeping all my life and I have woken up and opened my eyes to the world. A beautiful world! But impossible to live in. These are the words of fifteen-year-old Hadiya, blogging from the city of Mosul, Iraq, to let the world know what life is really like as the military occupation of her country unfolds. In many ways, her life is familiar. She worries about exams and enjoys watching Friends during the rare hours that the electricity in her neighborhood is running. But the horrors of war surround her everywhere—weeklong curfews, relatives killed, and friends whose families are forced to flee their homes. With black humor and unflinching honesty, Hadiya shares the painful stories of lives changed forever. “Let’s go back,” she writes, “to my un-normal life.” With her intimate reflections on family, friendship, and community, IraqiGirl also allows us to witness the determination of one girl not only to survive, but to create, amidst the devastation of war, a future worth living for. "Hadiya's authentically teenage voice, emotional struggles and concerns make her story all the more resonant." —Publishers Weekly “Despite all the news coverage about the war in Iraq, very little is reported about how it affects the daily lives of ordinary citizens. A highschooler in the city of Mosul fills in the gap with this compilation of her blog posts about living under U.S. occupation. She writes in English because she wants to reach Americans, and in stark specifics, she records the terrifying dangers of car bombs on her street and American warplanes overhead, as well as her everyday struggles to concentrate on homework when there is no water and electricity at home. Her tone is balanced: she does not hate Americans, and although she never supported Saddam Hussein, she wonders why he was executed... Readers will appreciate the details about family, friends, school, and reading Harry Potter, as well as the ever-present big issues for which there are no simple answers." —Hazel Rochman, Booklist “IraqiGirl has poured reflections of her daily life into her blog, reaching all over the cyber-world from her home in northern Iraq. She writes about the universals of teen life—school, family, TV, food, Harry Potter—but always against the background of sudden explosions, outbursts of gunfire, carbombs, death.… [A]n important addition to multicultural literature.” —Elsa Marston, author of Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories About Teens in the Arab World “A book as relevant to adults as teenagers and children. Hadiya’s clear, simple language conveys the feelings of a teenager, offering a glimpse into the daily life of a professional middle-class Iraqi family in an ancient-modern city subjected to a brutal occupation.” —Haifa Zangana, author of City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance

Welcome to Iraq, the birthplace of history! Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates rivers turned this Middle Eastern desert into the world’s first farmland. Over six millenia, Iraq’s civilizations have laid foundations for the rest of the world. They built great stone ziggurats and soaring mosques. They invented the wheel, the calendar, and the written word. With their riches, they also attracted war. Conqueror after conqueror—the bloodthirsty Assyrians, Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the British, and more—sought to claim Mesopotamia for their own. Today, Iraq’s enormous oil deposits, the cheapest to produce in the world, interest outside powers most. From the Taurus and Zagros mountains in the north to marshy Basra in the south, Iraqis have suffered under oppressive rulers and dictators for a thousand lifetimes. Today they cry out for a chance at freedom and democracy. The country’s lasting legacy in stone and thought hints that the determined Iraqi people will find their path to greatness once more.

Over the course of nearly eight years, the Iraq War claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This volume traces the entire conflict from Saddam Hussein's rise to power, decades before the war started, to the war's lingering effects today. The book includes primary source accounts describing what it's like to live through unimaginable violence and encourages readers to consider the information presented to form opinions of their own.

Educate your readers about the ongoing consequences of ISIS's presence in Iraq, by providing accounts of the situations that teenagers face there on a daily basis. This book includes background information about ISIS and the country of Iraq and its citizens, in addition to discussing the heart-wrenching effects of terrorism. This volume considers potential solutions to the problems of terrorism, empowering teens to help work toward a more peaceful and just world.

Traces the history, landscape, culture, and resources of this large Middle Eastern country currently in political and religious turmoil.

Explore diverse landscapes, travel back in time, and discover unique populations, all without leaving your chair! Start your international tour in Iraq, land of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, ancient Babylonia, the Code of Hammurabi, and so much more. This colorful, informative book introduces Iraq's history, geography, culture, climate, government, economy, and other significant features. Sidebars, maps, fact pages, a glossary, a timeline, historic images and full-color photos, and well-placed graphs and charts enhance this engaging title. Countries of the World is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.

The modern history of Iraq is punctuated by a series of successive and radical ruptures (coups d'etat, changes of regime, military adventures and foreign invasions) whose chronological markers are relatively easy to identify. Although researchers cannot ignore these ruptures, they should also be encouraged to establish links between the moments when the breaks occur and the longue durée, in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Combining a variety of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this collection of essays seeks to establish some new markers which will open fresh perspectives on the history of Iraq in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and suggest a narrative that fits into new paradigms. The book covers the various different periods of the modern state (the British occupation and mandate, the monarchy, the first revolutions and the decades of Ba'thist rule) through the lens of significant groups in Iraq society, including artists, film-makers, political and opposition groups, members of ethnic and religious groups, and tribes.