Volume 38, Number 8 · April 25, 1991
In Saddam's Arms
By Peter Partner
The Monument: Art, Vulgarity and Responsibility in Iraq
by Samir al-Khalil
University of California Press, 153 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba'thist Iraq, 1968–89
by Amatzia Baram
St. Martin's, 196 pp., $35.00
Saddam Hussein is now, so long as he holds power, the insecure dictator of a crippled and only partly industrialized third world nation of seventeen million souls. Hitler and Stalin, the rulers of great, powerful nations, may once have served as his models, but they can no longer do so. It is a good moment to consider the relationship of Iraq and its dictator to the West in an unfamiliar setting, that of the public arts.
Review, 3860 words
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