As we approach the hundredth anniversary of its inception, World War I, or, as Europeans are inclined to refer to it, the Great War, keeps its fascination. Scholarly interest in the war has never flagged, but in a world where the reading of books, particularly long ones, is said to be waning, authors and publishers seek to produce histories that will seem fresh to readers, rather than, say, another blow-by-blow account of the battle of the Somme, emphasizing the tragic waste of lives, etc.

Charles Townshend (Keele Univ.) has written a very different book from Englund's, one clearly inspired by Great Britain's role in the recent war in Iraq.[3] Many Britons objected to the Blair government's decision to ally itself with the United States, as was seen in the huge demonstration held in London to oppose the imminent invasion in February 2003. Six years later the Chilcot Inquiry was set up to examine not only the decision to go to war but its consequences. (The findings of the inquiry are due in 2013.) A similar inquiry into the British campaign in Mesopotamia, as Iraq was then known, followed the siege and surrender of British forces at Kut-al-Amara in April 1916. The story of that failure has often been told, though not so often as that of the more romantic but equally diastrous Gallipoli expedition of 1915. Townshend tells it very well and shares as a key primary source one of Englund's characters—Edward Mousley. But he does much besides; indeed, his book is really two books trying to become one. The first four hundred pages or so describe the stumbling progress of the British in Mesopotamia until November 1916, when the army, under Gen. Stanley Maude, finally entered Baghdad. The last hundred pages sketch events from Maude's death in November 1917 until 1925.

Evidently Townshend and/or his publisher decided that limiting the book to just the military campaign of 1914–16 would not do, given the events of the post-9/11 decade. For the unintended consequences of both Iraq wars have far exceeded their significance in and of themselves. Certainly this is true of the earlier war: prior to 1914, Townshend argues, "Britain had been one of the most cautious of imperial powers." But in the years after the war, "something strange happened. Suddenly … Britain grasped at an imperial expansion on a dizzying scale" (xxiii), even as its financial resources deteriorated. Unfortunately, the hurried quality of the book's last hundred pages sharply contrasts with the measured, detailed pace of what has come before. That said, the whole is a joy to read.

Desert Hell also challenges received opinions. Its author, for example, is less critical of Gen. Charles Townshend, the commander at Kut during the siege, than are other historians. After noting that he is no relation to the general, "as far as I know," he concludes that Townshend "was in some ways hard done by" (xiii–xiv), as those who served with him, like Edward Mousley, would have agreed. Fewer, however, would have concurred with the claim that the "hardships" they experienced in Turkish captivity after the surrender at Kut were "due to simple incompetence rather than deliberate policy" (306). Yet another example of Townshend's fresh perspective on a familiar subject is his insistence that "oil was a secondary issue" in British thinking in 1914 and that "the real objective" of the campaign was to show the Arabs that they had British support (37–38).

Townshend has written a book for both general and academic readers. His division of the text into forty-one short chapters, as well as his bibliography and extensive footnotes will serve both audiences well. The same cannot be said for the volume's mere three maps; the one that matters most, "The Middle East in 1914," is virtually unusable.