Land Between the Rivers by Bartle Bull

This book’s full title is Land Between the Rivers; A 5,000 Year History of Iraq. This is a long book and not only covers the area of what is now Iraq, but covers the whole middle east as the Iraq area is invaded or highly influence by the areas surrounding it. For example, he talks a great deal about the beginnings of Islam and the Arabs, as they invaded the area between the two rivers.

This a large read, but it is quite readable and I think that it is worth it for the wealth of information about Iraq and the surrounding area. This is the area of the first civilizations and Bartle Bull covers a lot of ground. Bartle Bull seems to be a good writer, but his interviews are hard to listen to and follow what he is trying to say.

There are some interesting reviews at Good Reads about this book. Peter Gordon on Asian Review of Books has an interest review of this book. He ends the review by saying “Mesopotamia has a good claim on being both incomprehensibly ancient and central to world history to an extent now often under-appreciated, an oversight that Land Between the Rivers should go a long (enjoyable) way to correcting”. The review from Inquiry from an Anti-Library on YouTube covers the story told about in this book, but the reviewer talks in a monotone. The last review I want to point out is one by Douglas Ollivant at Rappahannock Musings. This is a long review, but worth reading.

Leslie Heaney interviews Bartle Bull . They talk about his book and Iraq. Susan Appe moderates a conversation between Robert Kaplan and Bartle Bull about their most recent books on YouTube. Robert Kaplan wrote Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis and Bartle wrote Land Between Two Rivers. There is a comment on Bartle Bull and speaking and he is not a good speaker.

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