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Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by WARRICK JOBY

WARRICK JOBY . Unknown Year . English

**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.

Categories: Literary Fiction

About the Author

Joby Warrick is a best-selling author and a national security correspondent for The Washington Post. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he served with the Post’s national and investigative staffs, reporting from Washington and scores of cities around the world. In addition to his latest book, “Red Line,” he is the author of two previous two nonfiction books, including “The Triple Agent,” a New York Times best-seller about a CIA operation in Afghanistan; as well as “Black Flags,” a narrative account of the personalities and events that gave rise to the Islamic State. “Black Flags” was listed as one of the best books of 2015 by numerous publications, and was the recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. As a Washington Post reporter, Warrick has written on topics ranging from Middle East conflicts and terrorism to nuclear proliferation and climate change. Before coming to The Post, Warrick was an investigative reporter for The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., where he co-authored “Boss Hog,” a series of stories that documented the political and environmental fallout caused by factory farming in the Southeast. The series won the 1996 “Gold Medal” Pulitzer Prize for public service. Prior to that, Warrick was a foreign correspondent for United Press International in Eastern Europe. Warrick graduated summa cum laude from Temple University in 1982 with a B.A. in journalism. A native of North Carolina, he lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

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