The Iraq War of 2003–11 may go down in history as one of the most unnecessary conflicts ever. Ostensibly invaded by the United States and her allies to rid this middle eastern nation of “weapons of mass destruction” (read: nuclear bombs), which were never found, the cover story then shifted to ridding Iraq of terrorists, whoever they were. An image ingrained in the mind of this reviewer is that of a contemporary political cartoon depicting President George W. Bush swatting a hornet’s nest with a stick.

This one-volume reference work purports to shed light on the often murky goings-on that have transpired in a country far removed from our own. In the words of the preface, this volume seeks to provide “a comprehensive overview of the war, valuable to scholars but comprehensible to ordinary readers” (xiii). This worthy goal has only been partially met, as what we have here is a mixed bag. Of the 250 some alphabetically arranged and signed entries, the strongest are those giving a straightforward factual accounting of the topic at hand, for example, the article on the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Very solidly written, this entry details the aircraft’s armaments, strengths and weaknesses, development history, and so on. Weakest writing occurs in articles that attempt to analyze or evaluate information. The piece on “Intelligence” (read: spying) presents the reader with some awkward and vague verbiage: “New intelligence communications architectures were built to pass critical intelligence more quickly from strategic to tactical levels and vice versa” (174–75). Other articles gloss over important facts. The contributor of the entry “Weapons of Mass Destruction” fails to admit that WMD was a no-show in Iraq, a major reason for going to war, and instead concentrates on a discussion of these chemical/biological/nuclear devices in other nations, at the same time employing evasive language, such as “Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Iran are all believed to have significant stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons” (481). The author fails to relate as to how these beliefs came about; no evidence is cited to lend credence to the assertions made.

Editor Mockaitis holds master’s and doctoral degrees in modern British and Irish History from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is currently a professor of history at DePaul University, Chicago and is responsible for many books concerning recent mideastern conflicts. One suspects the weak link in the editorial chain is the so-called “independent scholar.” Several of them are listed on the contributors’ page. Who are these folks? What are their credentials? How were they selected to participate in this project? These questions must go unanswered, for there is no information given as to their background.

Considering the middling quality of this work and the fact that so many wars in the middle east/south-central Asia theater were interwoven and being fought concurrently, it is suggested that a better use of reference collection development dollars would be the acquisition of a competing title, namely, Spencer C. Tucker’s five-volume The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars (ABC-Clio, 2010). While not quite as current, and necessarily more expensive, this set takes in the whole of the armed conflicts that have flared up in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and other hot spots in this region, fought over the course of the past thirty years. Tucker, of course, is a well-respected military historian who has written and edited a goodly number of award-winning reference sets. He’s at the top of his game here, as The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars received a starred review in both Booklist and Library Journal, for instance. Need we say more?