Iraq: A Tourist Guidebook (1966)

Links to the book here.

Just for a change, today’s blog entry is something different from my usual fare: a link to Iraq: A Tourist Guidebook, published in Baghdad in 1966. I found it at a bookstall in Doncaster (in the north of England) a few years ago, going for 20 pence or so, and I’ve just scanned it in. Of course, the book presents a rosy picture of the country – while it boasts of the “4,906” Jews in Iraq, there’s no indication that the number had been much bigger a few years before – but it’s a fascinating glimpse not only of Iraq’s past, but of how the country might have developed in some alternative reality.

iraq-guidebook

Journalist Peter Hermann used a copy for a short 2003 piece that appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

(The book has been uploaded into Photobucket; I avoided Flikr as part of the boycott against Yahoo. Shi Tao remains in a Chinese prison)