W. H. McDonald Jr. of the The American Author Association said of Messages from Babylon, “Colonel Michael Whitehead authored an insightful book on our current situation in Iraq called "Messages from Babylon". It reads like you are receiving his emails messages from the Iraq battle front. The Colonel takes his readers through his 10 month long tour of duty from the outbreak of the war.

Whitehead recently retired from a 30 year career in the Army Reserve. In all that time never saw any combat - that is up until he was 49 years old. Then he got orders to deploy overseas on an assignment in a supporting roll for a Marine unit as their Civil Affairs Officer. This allowed him a real insider's view of what was going on and where.

He chronicles his daily life, his thoughts and his observations through his almost daily emails; thus we are able to feel the fresh emotions and telling of the events as if they had just happened. We learn all kinds of little trivia like having the medical evacuations going up as soon as units got extension orders for another six months tour of duty. The information is newsy and informative and gives a broad picture of what was happening.

Messages from Babylon Michael Whitehead  More Info

Whitehead gives us a causal look at his personal tour and what he saw but more importantly we get lots of candid comments about what he was thinking at that time. Unlike war memoirs from WWII or Vietnam the information seems clean of what we refer to as enhancements from lack of memory or a creative retelling over time and few beers. So what he writes seems as fresh as the day it happened.

Easy to read and assimilate and surprisingly entertaining. I think any solider or Marine going to Iraq might benefit from the reading of this book. The writing is clear and clean so it is family friendly. Put this on your personal list of books to read!”