Joseph Stieb (Author of The Regime Change Consensus)

Joseph Stieb rated a book Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance by Joel Rayburn	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a really good and reasonably sized guide to Iraqi politics from 2003 to about 2014. Rayburn emphasizes a couple of big themes about this period: First is the return to authoritarian rule in Iraq under Maliki. Iraq's experiment with something a ...more
Oct 14, 2026 10:06AM · 4 likes · like · see review
Joseph Stieb liked Steven Hull's review of Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance: " This is a short, well-written chronicle of the evolution of the Iraqi state during the last century, with a focus on the last forty years. The author, Joel Rayburn, is a U.S. Army Colonel who learned firsthand about the politics of modern Iraq durin" Read more of this review »
Oct 14, 2026 10:05AM · see review
Joseph Stieb liked Drew's review of Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance (The Great Unraveling: the Remaking of the Middle East: Hoover Institution Press Publication; No. 643): "Fantastic book. It can be very dense at times, each sentence containing a vital piece of knowledge that you will need to understand before you can picture the political landscape of Iraq after the American occupation. This is the fourth book I’ve rea" Read more of this review »
Oct 14, 2026 10:05AM · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance by Joel Rayburn	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a really good and reasonably sized guide to Iraqi politics from 2003 to about 2014. Rayburn emphasizes a couple of big themes about this period: First is the return to authoritarian rule in Iraq under Maliki. Iraq's experiment with something a ...more
Oct 14, 2026 09:53AM · 4 likes · like · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1) by Anne Rice	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I was completely locked into the first half of this book, but I thought the second half fell off considerably. The first half has an awesome story of the main character and the Vampire Lestat in antebellum New Orleans, framed by the interview device, ...more
Oct 13, 2026 08:48AM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency by Daniel Bessner	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Has some valuable insights/provocations, but also significant problems, and the individual essays are of widely varying quality. Will be publishing a formal review for H-Diplo at some point, so I'll post that later. ...more
Oct 13, 2026 08:04AM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Cold War Liberalism by Daniel Bessner. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Cold War Liberalism by Daniel Bessner <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A book that you hate can tell you as much about your literary taste as a book you liked. And I genuinely hated this book. First, the writing. Here is a passages that exemplify the cheesy, overwrought, saccharine writing: "Cyrus woke up the next morni ...more
Oct 12, 2026 06:37AM · 18 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb made a comment on his review of The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living " noice! "
Oct 10, 2026 03:51PM · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living by Dara Horn	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I once again find myself torn by Dara Horn. I mostly agree with her, and I think this is a valuable book. However, she writes like a polemicist, and there's a feeling of not getting the whole story. Evidence is often marshaled to bludgeon the reader, ...more
Oct 10, 2026 11:53AM · 5 likes · like · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France by Mary Louise Roberts	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A very interesting and focused history of sex, prostitution, and rape in the context of the US liberation/occupation of France. Roberts explores how the influx of hundreds of thousands (eventually millions) of young GIs into France transformed gender ...more
Oct 10, 2026 11:53AM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of What Soldiers Do by Mary Louise Roberts. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — What Soldiers Do by Mary Louise Roberts <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Joseph Stieb rated a book

Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance
by Joel Rayburn

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This is a really good and reasonably sized guide to Iraqi politics from 2003 to about 2014. Rayburn emphasizes a couple of big themes about this period:

First is the return to authoritarian rule in Iraq under Maliki. Iraq's experiment with something a This is a really good and reasonably sized guide to Iraqi politics from 2003 to about 2014. Rayburn emphasizes a couple of big themes about this period:

First is the return to authoritarian rule in Iraq under Maliki. Iraq's experiment with something approximating democracy was very real between the end of the formal US occupation period and about 2010. During this period, there was real political contestation and even some efforts at post-sectarian politics, although this period also coincided with a de facto Iraqi civil war. Maliki, however, became both a highly sectarian and authoritarian leader, stealing the 2010 election after losing a slim majority in Parliament and then using the state and his political allies to crack down on opposition, including arrests of his own vice president and many other leading Sunni officials. Maliki's actions hollowed out the more reasonable elements of Sunni politicians, giving power over to extremists and re-igniting the Iraqi civil war even before the rise of the Islamic State.

The next big theme is Iraq's struggle to transcend sectarian politics. There were highly sectarian groups in each major community in Iraq ready to fill the gap. Groups like SCIRI, Dawa, and the Sadrists fought with each other and against the Sunnis to exert Shia power, the Sunnis formed a Salafi-Baathist alliance system to try to hang on to their privileged status, and the Kurds moved rapidly to maximize their power in the North. Each had deep-seated grievances and a belief in themselves as either the rightful rulers of Iraq or as an essentially separate people. However, they also fought with each other, especially in the Shia community in 2007-2008 (and other times) when Maliki cracked down on the Sadrists. That's an important point: Iraqi politics is both inter and intra-sectarian, making it incredibly complex. Thankfully, Rayburn is an excellent guide to this morass.

This is a bleak assessment of Iraqi politics. The period of genuine democratic competition was quite small, marked by extreme violence and the overlap of the political process with insurgency and street fighting. Maliki suffocated the Iraqiyah Party under Ayad Allawi, which was probably the best chance to form a more nationalistic and post-sectarian politics. While it would be wrong to say that Iraqi nationalism isn't a thing, it is also clearly that the US didn't change the deeply sectarian nature of Iraqi politics.

That leads to my only criticism of the book: there's almost nothing on the US! The book is called "Iraq after America" even though the majority of the book occurs during the US occupation. There's almost no discussion of how US policies shaped and were shaped by Iraqi agency or how US policies evolved. This was an unfortunate omission, but this is still a valuable and readable book, great for scholars of Iraq and interested lay persons. ...more

Joseph Stieb liked Steven Hull's review of Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance:

" This is a short, well-written chronicle of the evolution of the Iraqi state during the last century, with a focus on the last forty years. The author, Joel Rayburn, is a U.S. Army Colonel who learned firsthand about the politics of modern Iraq durin" Read more of this review »

Joseph Stieb liked Drew's review of Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance (The Great Unraveling: the Remaking of the Middle East: Hoover Institution Press Publication; No. 643):

"Fantastic book. It can be very dense at times, each sentence containing a vital piece of knowledge that you will need to understand before you can picture the political landscape of Iraq after the American occupation. This is the fourth book I’ve rea" Read more of this review »

Joseph Stieb rated a book

Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance
by Joel Rayburn

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

This is a really good and reasonably sized guide to Iraqi politics from 2003 to about 2014. Rayburn emphasizes a couple of big themes about this period:

First is the return to authoritarian rule in Iraq under Maliki. Iraq's experiment with something a This is a really good and reasonably sized guide to Iraqi politics from 2003 to about 2014. Rayburn emphasizes a couple of big themes about this period:

First is the return to authoritarian rule in Iraq under Maliki. Iraq's experiment with something approximating democracy was very real between the end of the formal US occupation period and about 2010. During this period, there was real political contestation and even some efforts at post-sectarian politics, although this period also coincided with a de facto Iraqi civil war. Maliki, however, became both a highly sectarian and authoritarian leader, stealing the 2010 election after losing a slim majority in Parliament and then using the state and his political allies to crack down on opposition, including arrests of his own vice president and many other leading Sunni officials. Maliki's actions hollowed out the more reasonable elements of Sunni politicians, giving power over to extremists and re-igniting the Iraqi civil war even before the rise of the Islamic State.

The next big theme is Iraq's struggle to transcend sectarian politics. There were highly sectarian groups in each major community in Iraq ready to fill the gap. Groups like SCIRI, Dawa, and the Sadrists fought with each other and against the Sunnis to exert Shia power, the Sunnis formed a Salafi-Baathist alliance system to try to hang on to their privileged status, and the Kurds moved rapidly to maximize their power in the North. Each had deep-seated grievances and a belief in themselves as either the rightful rulers of Iraq or as an essentially separate people. However, they also fought with each other, especially in the Shia community in 2007-2008 (and other times) when Maliki cracked down on the Sadrists. That's an important point: Iraqi politics is both inter and intra-sectarian, making it incredibly complex. Thankfully, Rayburn is an excellent guide to this morass.

This is a bleak assessment of Iraqi politics. The period of genuine democratic competition was quite small, marked by extreme violence and the overlap of the political process with insurgency and street fighting. Maliki suffocated the Iraqiyah Party under Ayad Allawi, which was probably the best chance to form a more nationalistic and post-sectarian politics. While it would be wrong to say that Iraqi nationalism isn't a thing, it is also clearly that the US didn't change the deeply sectarian nature of Iraqi politics.

That leads to my only criticism of the book: there's almost nothing on the US! The book is called "Iraq after America" even though the majority of the book occurs during the US occupation. There's almost no discussion of how US policies shaped and were shaped by Iraqi agency or how US policies evolved. This was an unfortunate omission, but this is still a valuable and readable book, great for scholars of Iraq and interested lay persons. ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book

Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)
by Anne Rice

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I was completely locked into the first half of this book, but I thought the second half fell off considerably. The first half has an awesome story of the main character and the Vampire Lestat in antebellum New Orleans, framed by the interview device, ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book

Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency
by Daniel Bessner

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Has some valuable insights/provocations, but also significant problems, and the individual essays are of widely varying quality. Will be publishing a formal review for H-Diplo at some point, so I'll post that later. ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book

Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar

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A book that you hate can tell you as much about your literary taste as a book you liked. And I genuinely hated this book.

First, the writing. Here is a passages that exemplify the cheesy, overwrought, saccharine writing: "Cyrus woke up the next morni A book that you hate can tell you as much about your literary taste as a book you liked. And I genuinely hated this book.

First, the writing. Here is a passages that exemplify the cheesy, overwrought, saccharine writing: "Cyrus woke up the next morning cold, heavy, we too, he soon realized, though it took a moment, with cold and heavy being so much of wet." There is a lot of stuff like this; I think it's a product of trying to be poetic.

Second, the characters: the main character is obviously Kaveh Akbar, and he's whiny, pretentious, and generally insufferable. He says things like "apologies to Edward Said" when he goes to a hookah bar in Indiana. He's the most annoying person you knew in graduate school. And of course, he's obsessed with the multiple dimensions of his own victimization, victimization being the totality of his personality.

Third, the story. There's a big twist in here that the author didn't really set up or earn. Other than that, the story doesn't go anywhere and is basically a "celebration of brokenness." The main plot line is so threadbare that the author has to go back and narrate largely extraneous scenes from his family's past. I suppose this was an attempt at making the book more "cultural" or "authentic," but it fell flat for me.

Fourth, the metaphors...my God, the terrible metaphors. There are dozens of them, and they pretty much all sucked. Here's one: "Zee's goodness filled him like a drug." Ah, a metaphor worthy of Kesha! Also, martyrdom itself is the core motif, but it's basically unexplored and undeveloped. I still don't know why the book is called martyr or whether the main character is supposed to be a martyr. It's a good title, and that's it.

Finally, the politics: the politics of this book suck. There are gratuitous cheap shots at the United States. There are cringeworthy and unnecessary sections about "President Invective," who is obviously Trump (and I loathe Trump, but these parts were stupid and heavy-handed). There were ramblings that I'm sure sounded insightful if you are high and/or never talk to someone who doesn't share your politics. It reminded me of the book 'The Sympathizer," which was also and ethnic studies lecture in novel form.

Anyways, a lot of people clearly liked this book, so they must have seen something I didn't (maybe). If you are one of these people, let me know. But sheesh. ...more

Joseph Stieb made a comment on his review of The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question by Dara Horn

" noice! "

Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living
by Dara Horn

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I once again find myself torn by Dara Horn. I mostly agree with her, and I think this is a valuable book. However, she writes like a polemicist, and there's a feeling of not getting the whole story. Evidence is often marshaled to bludgeon the reader, I once again find myself torn by Dara Horn. I mostly agree with her, and I think this is a valuable book. However, she writes like a polemicist, and there's a feeling of not getting the whole story. Evidence is often marshaled to bludgeon the reader, as in a very long chapter about anti-Semitism at Harvard which showed problems, but nothing I would describe as a major crisis. I also think her tendency as a writer is to do 80% critique, then 20% of her own ideas/solutions. Furthermore, I'd like to hear more from her about her views on Israel today, especially the war in Gaza. I tend to think of myself as a liberal Zionist, but I also feel that liberal Zionism is basically dead (and that it may not have been terribly liberal in the first place). In this book, she often states that "yes, what is happening in Gaza is horrible" before moving on with her argument in a way that feels dismissive. She also blasts those who think the Gaza War is genocidal as borderline blood-libellers, and while I lean toward thinking this is not a genocide, it is clearly a brutal war that implicates Israel and Zionism on a deep level, and it is not fair to launch ad hominem attacks on reasonable people like Omer Bartov who think it is a genocide and make thoughtful arguments to that point.

Still, I think I have a better idea about what Horn wants after reading this and her other book, People Love Dead Jews. She is frustrated not only with the rise of anti-Semitism around the world but with the way people go about combatting it. She argues that education about Judaism in the US is so overwhelmingly focused on the Holocaust that it A. relegates Jews to the status of eternal victims and B. often seems to take the place of actually teaching about Judaism, a nation and religion that date back millennia and are foundational to Western Civilization. She makes the great point that teaching in Holocaust education that "Jews are just like us" actually is self-defeating; part of being Jewish is not being like everyone else, is maintaining an identity and tradition that resists assimilation into Christianity or Islam (although not into nations/kingdoms). Jews are like everyone else, of course, in their full humanity, but they are not simply "people who go to a different Church," as she contends in a chapter about post-WWII Jewish activism and representations in popular culture.

Horn argues that the key to beating anti-Semitism is teaching about Jewish life, not only Jewish death. That's her "Final Solution." Among other things, advocates more exposure to Jewish history, traditions, variety, and people, as well as more attention to the larger scope of anti-Semitism (and its current reality), not only the Holocaust. She also wants more exposure of the forces actively spreading anti-Semitism and conspiratorial anti-Zionism, from the Soviet Union to Iran today to myriad other actors. Horn also dislikes the idea of the Holocaust being made into a universal moral lesson when it was actually something done very specifically to Jews, the only group the Nazis targeted for absolute eradication and the center of their demonology. I think this is valuable, although I would push back, as there are patterns of dehumanization, propaganda, and genocide that can be taught through the HOlocaust and recognized elsewhere. Still, questioning whether HOlocaust ed is the solution to anti-semitism, and thinking more about the purpose of teaching the Holocaust as the seemingly defining event of Jewish life, is valuable.

There's a lot more to unpack in this book, which is thoughtful even if it gets a little ranty and polemical at times. Worth checking out. ...more

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What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France
by Mary Louise Roberts

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A very interesting and focused history of sex, prostitution, and rape in the context of the US liberation/occupation of France. Roberts explores how the influx of hundreds of thousands (eventually millions) of young GIs into France transformed gender A very interesting and focused history of sex, prostitution, and rape in the context of the US liberation/occupation of France. Roberts explores how the influx of hundreds of thousands (eventually millions) of young GIs into France transformed gender/sexual relationships, issues of sovereignty and authority, identity, and criminality.

US soldiers arrived in France with a cultural understanding of this country as sexually licentious, especially its women. They had, paid for, and at times forced sex on a huge scale, creating a massive market to which thousands of desperate French women fled to serve and creating a crisis for the US military authorities. Many in the US military, including in high positions of authority, viewed sex as a prerogative of the victors, but they also saw the massive explosion in prostitution and VD as a public relations crisis. They could not endorse anything but restraint publicly, but at the ground level they had to deal with soldiers seeking sex in enormous numbers, leading to policy incoherence and a dumping of responsibility on French authorities. This caused massive resentment among French men in particular, who viewed themselves as the keepers of French women (recall that women could not vote in France until the end of WWII) but felt defeated and emasculate both by the German conquerers and the American liberators. The military also faced the problem of sexual assault, which occurs in virtually all wartime settings and was notoriously hard to police in the chaos of wartime France. The military ended up putting disproportionate blame on black soldiers, leading to several dozen executions.. Roberts goes down to the granular level of social/gender history here to show the real lives of GIs, military authorities, and ordinary French people. Through this, she shows the complexity of liberation even within a clearly justified war.

A few drawbacks: At times, I thought Roberts was a little harsh on US military authorities, and she also stretches her conclusions a little far in some areas. For example, it would have benefited the argument to show how sex/prostitution was not merely the background but the foreground over US-Franco tensions during and after the war. The book doesn't go much past 1945, so that limits the scope of the argument (for example, there's not a lot on the effects of hundreds of thousands of US troops leaving France after the war). Still, this is an interesting and well-researched study of gender, sex, violence, and identity that considerably expanded my grasp of the social history of WWII. ...more

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