Once again Professor Khadduri puts Western readers in his debt. In completing his trilogy on the politics of Iraq since independence, he uses his unique qualifications and sources to provide a wealth of information on the little-known recent history of that country. With scholarly objectivity he generally lets the documents and the main actors - Baathists, Communists and others, many of whom he interviewed - speak for themselves. The result, for better or for worse, is to present the regime almost at face value.