Showing results by author "Bartle Bull" in All Categories

Land Between the Rivers is the result of ten years of research, writing, and thinking about the subject. It is an enormous topic: five thousand years, beginning with Gilgamesh at the edge of historical time. It is a big topic in another way. More than anywhere else, the famous Land Between the Rivers, where civilization was born, where East and West have mixed and clashed since long before Alexander, has led an existence that could be called, from a certain perspective, a history of the world.

Bull chronicles the story of Iraq from the exploits of Gilgamesh to the fall of the Iraqi monarchy that ushered in its modern era. The land between the rivers has been the melting pot and battleground of countless outsiders. Here, Judaism was born and the Sunni-Shia schism took its bloody shape.

It is 1942, and the American and British armies are landing in North Africa to fight the German army led by General Erwin Rommel. Underground resistance to German occupation is rising across Europe. In Jugoslavia, Communist and royalist resistance movements are fighting both the Germans and each other. American and British agents are parachuting into Jugoslavia from Egypt to assist them.