The similarities between the British occupation of Iraq in the 1920s and its American counterpart some 80 years later have not gone entirely unnoticed by all, as is evidenced by Dodge (U. of Warwick, UK) and his history of the British failure to create an Arab polity amenable to the demands of empire. More an examination of the dying days of empire than a history of Iraqi society, this book argues that the British Empire was fatally hobbled by financial and political limits in addition to an ideologically distorted view of the society they were vainly trying to reshape. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)