Books we're reading

The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk (Fourth Estate, 2006)  

With 1,300 pages or so, you’d think a story would have room to end. But after touring the places and the histories of the whole region through the observant eyes and brilliant mind of this inimitable reporter, one is left suspecting there is, tragically, another 1,300 pages yet to go on this story—depending, really, on how long the oil there lasts.

There are almost no good guys in the whole book. Things start pretty low and nosedive from there. But this is not a book like so many others on the region that have the people there incorrigibly at war with each other. Fisk does not flinch when pointing out the real culprits sustaining, profiting from, and encouraging the wars, the ethnic cleansings, and the official and unofficial terror campaigns: the British and then the American empires, both of whom have repeatedly gone there to “liberate” the suffering masses—only to liberate the oil under them instead.

Fisk is hard to argue with. If you’re bewildered and unsure who to trust, Fisk is reliable. Start with him and judge all others by his standards.