The definitive account of the world's most dangerous terrorist threat, from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joby Warrick.
JOBY WARRICK has been a reporter for The Washington Post since 1996. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and the author of Black Flags and The Triple Agent.
A deeply reported book of remarkable clarity showing how the flawed
rationale for the Iraq War led to the explosive growth of the
Islamic State.
*Pulitzer Prize committee*
Compelling and authoritative, with the narrative drive of a
thriller.
*Guardian*
Joby Warrick moves easily through the intelligence warrens of
Washington and the shattered landscape of the Middle East to tell
this insightful narrative of the rise of the Islamic State. Black
Flags is an invaluable guide to an unfolding tragedy that must be
understood before it can be ended.
*Lawrence Wright, author of Thirteen Days in September and The
Looming Tower*
A deep, well-balanced and thought-provoking account with a genuine
feel for Middle Eastern realities.
*Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens*
Warrick uses very compelling first-hand testimony to reconstruct
Zarqawi's short, violent life.
*Literary Review*
This is journalism at its best: clear, readable and
enlightening.
*The Irish Times*
Joby Warrick is one of America's leading national security
reporters, so it's no surprise that Black Flags is the most deeply
reported and well-written account we have about ISIS and its
terrorist army.
*Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden
from 9/11 to Abbottabad*
Invaluable for anyone struggling to understand the gruesome
excesses and inexplicable appeal of ISIS. As this seminal book
makes alarmingly clear, Zarqawi's appalling legacy won't fade any
time soon.
*Los Angeles Times*
Gripping … Warrick has a gift for constructing narratives with a
novelistic energy and detail, and in this volume he creates the
most revealing portrait yet laid out in a book of Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi, the founding father of the organization that would
become the Islamic State… For readers interested in the roots of
the Islamic State and the evil genius of its godfather, there is no
better book to begin with than Black Flags.
*The New York Times*
Gripping ... a zippy, atmospheric and character-led narrative. It
offers a necessary and important backstory to the unfurling of
black flags across Syria and Iraq today.
*New Statesman*
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*
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*
Riveting and detailed... Warrick’s book might be the most thorough
and nuanced account of the birth and growth of ISIS published so
far. Black Flags is full of personalities, but it keeps its gaze
carefully focused on the wider arc of history.
*Boston Globe*
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*
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*
Compulsively readable. What makes Warrick’s book unique is its
focus on the group’s roots, especially the evolution of its
founder.
*Washington Post*
Warrick charts Zarqawi’s rise from booze-swilling Jordanian street
tough to one of the most brutal jihadists in the world.
*The New Yorker*
[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)*
A revealing, riveting and exquisitely detailed account of the life
and death of Zarqawi, the improbable terrorist mastermind, and the
rise of the movement now known as the Islamic State.
*San Francisco Chronicle*
A detailed, step-by-step narrative demonstrating how repeated
miscalculations wound up empowering the Islamic State … Black Flags
provides answers in this still-unfolding history.
*Dallas Morning News*
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