Drawing on the author's knowledge of and contacts with the Arab world, especially in Iraq, Said Aburish gives us an accurate, compelling biography and psychological profile of the man the western world feared most. The author worked with Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, adding dimension and personal experience to our understanding of this remarkable dictator. The book includes an account of Saddam's series of personal quests—for recognition after being orphaned and brought up by a destitute uncle; for control of his country; for leadership in the Arab world; for mastery in the technology of destruction. This is the frightening story of how the man who, with the encouragement of Western governments, made his country the most advanced in the Arab world in the 1970s, and through personal ambition led it to disaster at the end of the 1980s.