Sasson's first book, "The Rape of Kuwait" about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, was published in 1991. It was a work of propaganda funded by the Kuwaiti government which was allegedly based on interviews Sasson had conducted with pseudonymous Kuwaitis who had fled to Cairo, Saudi Arabia, London and Washington, D.C. The book was published before the war broke out. Advertisements in the major newspapers and on network television featured the book with the accompanying tag line: "Read it and you'll know why we're there". The Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington distributed 250,000 copies of it to American troops in the Persian Gulf.