" This is Rory Stewart's account of his service as a diplomat for the Coalition Provisional Authority in southern Iraq 2003-4. I found his book, The Places in Between well-written and revelatory. I struggled with this book. The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq is engagingly written with touches of self-deprecating humor and clearly tells of the challenges of "nation building" in Iraq after the coalition invasion. I think why I had a hard time dragging myself back to this book was because it was all so discouraging. No answers, simple or complex, emerged. I was reading this at the time that US troops were completing their withdrawal from Iraq and I am not sure that we are leaving a stable, healthy country even now. "
— itpdx, 2/4/2014