JOBY WARRICK has been a reporter for The Washington Post since 1996. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for journalism and for his book Black Flags: The Rise of Isis. He is also the author of The Triple Agent.
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post,
People Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Kansas City Star, and
Kirkus Reviews
“Gripping. . . . Mr. 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.” —Michiko
Kakutani, The New York Times
“Warrick charts Zarqawi’s rise from booze-swilling Jordanian street
tough to one of the most brutal jihadists in the world. He
demonstrates how much the militants of the Islamic State owe to
Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006—not only their ideology but even
the color of the jumpsuits that prisoners wear in execution videos.
The militants of ISIS, one of Warrick’s sources explains, are
the ‘children of Zarqawi.’” —The New Yorker
“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 (also known as
ISIS).” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A detailed, step-by-step narrative demonstrating how repeated
miscalculations by the United States, Arab leaders and al-Qaeda
wound up empowering the Islamic State. . . . Black Flags provides
answers in this still-unfolding history of what happens when
religious radicals try to outdo one another for the mantle of God’s
favorite.” —Dallas Morning News
“Invaluable for anyone struggling to understand the gruesome
excesses and inexplicable appeal of ISIS . . . [a] seminal book.”
—Los Angeles Times
“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
“The sort of work every journalist would love to write and few can:
a detailed and perceptive analysis that's also a page-turner . . .
necessary reading for anybody who wants to put Islamic State into
the context of both contemporary jihadism and the long history of
Muslim fundamentalism.” —Chicago Tribune
“[Black Flags] is clear and well-told, a good guide for those
horrified by the group's emergence but not familiar with every step
of the crumbling of Iraq and Syria over the past dozen years. . .
. [It] lays out in strong detail just how rough a
neighborhood, both geographically and ideologically, the struggle
against ISIS is taking place in.” —Associated Press
“Joby Warrick . . . [has] a great eye for memorable
characters. In Black Flags he puts faces on the amorphous
organizations we hear about all the time, namely ISIS and the
CIA. Learning about the origins of ISIS is key to understanding the
organization today—and key to understanding why we failed to halt
ISIS’s growth.” —GQ.com
“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
“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
“Joby Warrick weaves Black Flags with the tradecraft of a spy, the
mind of an investigative reporter, and the pen of a novelist. The
picture that emerges is sometimes hard to bear: of brutal ISIS
torturers and Jordanian interrogators, of bumbling U.S. leaders, of
American intelligence services that still can't get it right
quickly enough. We should all thank Warrick for telling a hard
truth the government will not want to hear: how U.S. policies
helped give birth to the so-called Islamic State.” —Dana Priest,
two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter and author
of Top Secret America
“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
“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
“[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 written a penetrating and fascinating look at the
birth and evolution of the world’s most violent terrorist network,
ISIS, or ISIL. This is an eye-opening book. . . . The author tells
his story through rich details and revealing anecdotes that bring
you into the violent world of Islamic extremism. At times, you feel
as if you’re sitting in a tent in a remote region of Iraq, watching
and listening to al-Zarqawi as he claws his way to the top of the
terrorist chain. . . . The writing is crisp, the reporting
incredible, a combination of extensive digging and terrific use of
sources.” —Buffalo News
Ask a Question About this Product More... |