"As I struggled against the wave of terrified people outside the hotel, the fourth blast went off less than a hundred metres away ..."

Travels in American Iraq is a riveting portrait of a city and country on the brink of civil war. When the Coalition of the Willing liberated Iraq from the yoke of Saddam in early 2003, George W. Bush announced that the second Gulf War was over. John Martinkus's account of seven weeks spent travelling independently around Iraq in early 2004 shows just the opposite.

More immediate, more intimate and more sceptical than other writing from the war-torn country, it takes us into the key places of the new Iraq - from Abu Ghraib prison to the Coalition's sealed-off security zone. There is an astonishing eyewitness account of the March 2004 Karbala bombings, and vivid accounts of meetings with ordinary Iraqis, religious leaders, insurgents and occupying troops.

This book provides an acute insight into the limits of American power, in the form of a travelogue - both humorous and chilling - like no other.