Baghdaddy
How Saddam Hussein Taught Me to Be a Better Father
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
As a child, he was raised in an unstable and violent home by a mother struggling with mental illness. An absent father with a firm belief in tough love left him with only his sister to understand or comfort him as they faced a home full of harshness, resentment, and physical abuse.
As a man, he braved the war-torn landscapes of Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Having learned early from his father that only the strong survive, he enlisted in the Air Force directly after high school and began an impressive military career in intelligence analysis, communications, and supporting special operations, meeting incredible individuals along the way.
Baghdaddy is Bill Riley’s memoir: an honest and colorful depiction of his journey through a turbulent youth and into a challenging adulthood. This very human account of living in some of the least humane environments delivers the message that no matter how different we seem, we are all trying to make the best of life and learn how to be the best versions of ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Riley's memoir, by turns grueling and entertaining, spans his difficult childhood and early Air Force career in the Middle East. The most brutal sections cover his early life: Riley grew up in Farmingville, N.Y., on Long Island, and suffered abuse from his mother and harsh strictness from his often-absent father while trying to protect his sister, Isabel. After high school, Riley joined the Air Force in the early 1980s and became an intelligence analyst. The book focuses on his time in Kuwait before and during Operation Desert Fox as he built a coalition command center and learned about Middle Eastern cultures, and later in Baghdad six months after the first Iraq War ended, going on communications repair missions, the last of which involves a dramatic firefight. He relates his military experiences with wit, a slightly twisted sense of humor (wringing laughs from an unexpected duel with a hissing camel spider), and evocative imagery (describing rain falling "while the sun touched the earth through the holes in angry clouds, like an illustration from a child's Bible story"). While the book doesn't follow through on the fatherhood focus indicated by its subtitle, it's an amusing, often exciting war memoir that readers of the genre will enjoy.
