Seldom in history has a nation engaged in war without knowing the enemy, as the United States has in Iraq. This book explores, through real life stories, the social and political dynamics at play in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan before the rise of Saddam Hussein. Kirkuk is a hotly contested oil city--a time bomb with the potential to shatter the fragile hope for unity in Iraq. In this book-half memoir, half history--Iraqi-American physician Henry Astarjian reveals the turmoil of life under Communism then as a political prisoner in a death row cell in Iraq and a military prison in Baghdad. Told...