2011 Books 12

12) Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos: Bogdanos was the marine colonel working in a counter-smuggling/border securing role in Iraq who took it upon himself to defend the Iraqi museum from further looting and to recover the lost artifacts. This is his first person account of that activity, from his working the chain of command to get even nominal permission to the assignment to trying to figure out the multiple crimes that occurred to his final position as the head of New York's task force against antiquities smuggling upon his leaving active duty. It was very enjoyable, with lots of bits one could steal for caper/high end theft games as he works through how people managed to use the chaos of the war to perform some high end robberies in the museum amongst the looting.