Pulitzer Prize General Non Fiction Winner
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS
by Joby Warrick
Summary
An account of how the Islamic State emerged from the wreckage of the Iraq War, traced through the figures, prisons, and intelligence missteps that enabled its growth. Warrick centers the story on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian street thug whose radicalization in prison set the ideological template for the movement. The book draws on extensive Jordanian and American intelligence sources to explain how a fringe insurgency became a self-declared caliphate.
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Historical Context & Significance
Warrick traced the movement back to a single Jordanian thug, showing how his ideology filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the Iraqi state.