Black Flags: The Rise of Isis
Author(s): Joby Warrick
Philosophy, Politics & Current Affairs
WINNER of the PULITZER PRIZE for NON-FICTION 2016. In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread to become the world's greatest threat. When the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In Black Flags, an unprecedented character-driven account of the rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Western governments led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swathes of Syria and Iraq. Zarqawi began by directing terror attacks from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the allied invasion in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By falsely identifying him as the link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, Western officials inadvertently spurred like-minded radicals to rally to his cause.
Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings persisted until American and Jordanian intelligence discovered clues that led to a lethal airstrike on Zarqawi's hideout in 2006. His movement, however, endured. First calling themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq, then Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, his followers sought refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, and the rest of the world largely stood by, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi's dream of an ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate. Drawing on unique high-level access to global intelligence sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today's most dangerous extremist threat.
Product Information
The definitive account of the world's most dangerous terrorist threat, from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joby Warrick.
"A page-turner and a flat-out great book. This is the inside account of how we ended up with the Islamic State, with one revelation after another. If you read one book on ISIS, this is it." Robert Baer, author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism "Joby Warrick is an exceptional storyteller, and Black Flags is both illuminating and spellbinding. No book better explains the miscalculations, wrong turns, and bad luck that led to the rise of ISIS." Rick Atkinson, author of The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 "Drawing on his unrivaled sources and access, Joby Warrick has written a profoundly important and groundbreaking book, one that reads like a novel, riveting from the first page to the last. If you want to know the story behind ISIS, and all of us should, this is the book you must read." Martha Raddatz, Chief Global Affairs Correspondent, ABC News, and author of The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family "Joby Warrick weaves Black Flags with the tradecraft of a spy, the mind of an investigative reporter, and the pen of a novelist." Dana Priest, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter and author of Top Secret America "[A] crisply written, chilling account ... Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Warrick confidently weaves a cohesive narrative from an array of players-American officials, CIA officers, Jordanian royalty and security operatives, religious figures, and terrorists-producing an important geopolitical overview with the grisly punch of true-crime nonfiction ... The author focuses on dramatic flashpoints and the roles of key players, creating an exciting tale with a rueful tone, emphasizing how the Iraq invasion's folly birthed ISIS and created many missed opportunities to stop al-Zarqawi quickly." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
JOBY WARRICK has been a reporter for The Washington Post since 1996. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, and the author of The Triple Agent.
General Fields
- :
- : Random House USA Inc
- : Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc
- : 0.493
- : 31 October 2015
- : 234mm X 153mm
- : United States
- : 01 November 2015
- : 07 July 2016
- : books
Special Fields
- : Joby Warrick
- : Paperback
- : 1
- : 322.420956
- : 368