In "Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge", the author draws on his own knowledge of and extensive contacts within the Arab world to produce both a thorough biography and a penetrating psychological profile of the most powerful and unpredictable man in the world today. He explains why Saddam behaves as he does by suggesting that his life has been marked by a series of personal quests: for recognition after being orphaned and brought up by a destitute uncle; for control of his country; for leadership of the Arab world; for mastery of the technology of destruction, and who now fights for Iraq's survival. This is the chilling 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, now fights for its survival.