Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection After the Iraq War

Following the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the Iraqi National Museum and numerous cultural and archaeological sites experienced massive looting, both by traditional looting and unchecked illegal digging; at the time of this publication, Iraq's 10,000 officially recognized sites are being decimated at a rate of 10 percent per year. Rothfeld (Cultural Policy Center, U. of Chicago) leads an international cast of contributors documenting both the case of Iraq and the context of the looting, followed by an extensive section providing advice for preventing looting after armed combat in other vulnerable regions. Politicians, policy makers, and archaeologists alike would benefit from this comprehensive and informative publication. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lawrence Rothfield is faculty director and co-founder of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. He was previously the director of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and is also a professor of comparative literature, in which field he has three publications.