The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
…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…Mr. Warrick focuses parts of this book on the lives of several individuals with singular, inside takes on the overarching story…This narrative approach lends the larger story of the Islamic State an up-close-and-personal immediacy and underscores the many what-ifs that occurred along the way…For readers interested in the roots of the Islamic State and the evil genius of its godfather, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, there is no better book to begin with than Black Flags.
Publishers Weekly
08/31/2015
Pulitzer-winner Warrick (The Triple Agent) examines the origins of ISIS in this incisive, horrifying, and eminently readable work. Though the group was officially founded in 2006, Warrick traces its roots back to the recruitment of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by al-Qaeda in 1999. Warrick follows Zarqawi’s unlikely rise from lowly Jordanian street thug to Afghan mujahideen, to brilliant strategist and charismatic leader. With surgical precision, the author details how a perfect storm of circumstances—Zarqawi’s friendship with a noted radical Muslim scholar who was in prison with him, the king of Jordan’s sudden death and his son’s reluctant acceptance of the crown, and, most notably and disastrously, the U.S. occupation of Iraq—led to Zarqawi’s ascent. Readers trying to keep track of the heads of state, CIA operatives, tribal leaders, clerics, and diplomats will be glad for the list of principal characters in the book’s front matter, but they’ll rarely need to consult it, thanks to Warrick’s firm grasp and skillful explanation of the complicated subject matter. This is an eye-opening read for general audiences seeking to learn more about the current crisis in the Middle East. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
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
Library Journal
10/01/2015
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Warrick (The Triple Agent) describes the genesis and development of a terrorist group that is best known in the West as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In 1999, the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of prisoners that included Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man convicted by Jordanian authorities for masterminding terrorist activities in that country. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 brought Zarqawi to the forefront of a lethal anti-American Sunni insurgency. Zarqawi's movement called itself al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike against his hideout in 2006 and al-Qaeda in Iraq eventually morphed into today's ISIS. When the Syrian civil war began in 2011, ISIS took advantage of the power vacuum in Syria and Iraq by controlling strategic areas in both countries, declaring the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, and unleashing a reign of terror in the area that has resulted in countless acts of political brutality and savagery. Warrick uses a variety of documents and high-level access to CIA and Jordanian sources to present a coherent history. VERDICT An informative book for those who want to gain an understanding of one of the most dangerous extremist groups in today's world.—Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile
JULY 2016 - AudioFile
Narrator Sunil Malhotra reads this dramatic audiobook, a Pulitzer Prize winner, with a reportorial style, deftly handling the tongue-twisting Middle Eastern names. This approach allows him to illuminate the foundations of the most dangerous terror organization on the planet—known in the West as ISIS. His measured delivery lets the story tell itself, with all its horrific facts. This audiobook closely follows the course of jihadist terror since 9/11, focusing on the past five years. The listener comes away with the ISIS origins story (bombings, beheadings, and betrayals) leavened with fascinating profiles of its prime movers—terrorists like Abu Mussab al Zarqawi and Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi; regional power brokers like Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Syria’s Bahsar al-Assad; and important Americans like CIA operative Nada Bakos and diplomat Robert S. Ford. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-07-30
Crisply written, chilling account of the personalities behind the emergence of the Islamic State, or ISIS. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Warrick (The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA, 2011) 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. Initially, he focuses on Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a sullen thug who discovered Muslim fundamentalism while incarcerated in the 1990s and turned it into a framework for savagery against other Muslims. Against the backdrop of the bungled American invasion of Iraq, al-Zarqawi stoked a Sunni-Shiite civil war and normalized horrific tableaux like the suicide bombing of the United Nations mission. Soon, "Islamist media were awash in Zarqawi-inspired gore," effectively increasing his support, until he overstepped with a hotel bombing in Jordan. Although the U.S. military killed al-Zarqawi in 2006, Syria's civil war provided a second front for the remnants of al-Zarqawi's jihadis. His successor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who transformed the group into ISIS, "was not a violent troublemaker like Zarqawi or an adventurer like Osama bin Laden." Indeed, Warrick notes, "had it not been for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Islamic State's greatest butcher would likely have lived out his years as a college professor." Yet, ISIS achieved rapid military success across Iraq and Syria beginning in 2013 and revived their emphasis on terrorist atrocity, with Baghdadi's goals clear, as a U.S. official noted: "He was talking about physically restoring the Islamic caliphate in a way that nobody else did." 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. Warrick stops short of offering policy solutions, but he provides a valuable, readable introduction to a pressing international security threat.
