Editor’s comment:  When this book was among Gates’ recommendations, I jumped at it.  I’ve never put together anything coherent about the jihadist movement until some things connected through this book.  The good news for casual historians like me, Warrick won the Pulitzer Prize for this with facts but it reads for me like a novel, albeit a very dark one.  It takes a chapter or two to connect names using four or five words and a hyphen or two, but I felt I learned a lot by turning its pages.

Favorite excerpt: “This is why ISIS carries a black flag today, as it believes it is the culmination of the prophecy. Zarqawi ('the man from Zarqa") and Baghdadi (even though his hometown is Samarra, not Baghdad) have evidently chosen their names out of belief that they fulfill the prophecy.”