A moving, reflexive, and deeply felt account

Timely and crucial research.

[This] book makes a vital and original contribution to the literature on Iraq's modern history and to the literature on gender and women's studies. But at the same time its rich, fascinating and revealing text is enormously readable and accessible to the non-specialist, and it deserves a wide readership.

Al-Hayat

This book is a powerful antidote to the image of Iraqi women as passive victims, promoted by apologists for USA imperial policy in order to justify sanctions, war and occupation. It opens a window onto a past all our rulers would rather forget, reminding us that women's struggles for liberation have shaped Iraq's history, even when mere survival would have been achievement enough.

Anne Alexander, International Socialism

...should be required reading for anyone who wants to get beyond the usual litanies of depression about the war and the stereotypes about Middle East women held even by "progressives." Excerpts from a hundred interviews of Iraqi women stud the author's narrative to yeild a detailed, rich and contradictory "alternative history or histories" that begins with late-1940s post-colonial Iraq....It will be left to future writers to explore the rooms whose doors this hallmark new book has opened for us.

Ellen Cantarow, Counterpunch

An original and engrossing book ... It speaks with an immediacy and an authenticity that should put many ersatz histories of Iraq to shame. I recommend it to all those interested in women's contributions to Iraq.

Hala Fattah, Historian

An extraordinary book ... Particularly sobering is the author's balanced and sensitive analysis of the negative effects on women's rights and lives of the decade of sanctions and the current US- British occupation.

Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University