Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

WINNER OF THE 2016 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION

“A Best Book of 2015”—The New York Times, The Washington Post, People Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Kansas City Star, and Kirkus Reviews

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 with the unwitting aid of two American presidents. Drawing on unique high-level access to CIA and Jordanian 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.

• The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
• Inside Terrorism (Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare)
• Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind
• Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill
• Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism
• The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
• The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
• The Psychology of Terrorism (Political Violence)
• Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA