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Shatter the nations : ISIS and the war for the Caliphate / Mike Giglio.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : PublicAffairs, 2019Edition: First editionDescription: xiii, 303 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
  • cartographic image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1541742354
  • 9781541742352
Subject(s): Summary: The war against ISIS and the so-called caliphate it declared across Syria and Iraq was a battle to define not just the Middle East but the wider world. Growing from the aftermath of the U.S. war in Iraq and a brutal civil war in Syria, ISIS sought to usher in a new era of conflict as it launched terrorist attacks across Europe, while inflicting a savage extremism on the population in controlled. And the U.S. developed a new kind of war to stop it - one that relied heavily on the sacrifices of local soldiers who fought on behalf of the American cause. This struggle came to a climax in the Iraqi city of Mosul, the crown jewel of the caliphate, in the deadliest urban combat the world had seen in a generation. Few journalists got as close to the war, and to protagonists on both sides of it, as Mike Giglio, who spent six years reporting on the rise and fall of the ISIS proto-state. He traveled along the Turkey-Syria border with the smugglers and operatives who worked in ISIS's criminal and financial networks, accompanied antiquities traders to visit stolen artifacts that helped to fund the ISIS war effort, sat with human traffickers at the heart of the migrant crisis, met with ISIS defectors as they tried to free their minds from its grip, and embedded with local soldiers on the front lines. Behind the drama on the battlefield, the suspense was in how much ISIS might change the world before its cities fell and how many of America's allies it could kill along the way. This is a chilling portrait of the destructive power of extremism, and of the tenacity and astonishing courage required to defeat it.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 956.7044 G459 Available 33111009535341
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Unflinching dispatches of an embedded war reporter covering ISIS and the unlikely alliance of forces who came together to defeat it.

The battle to defeat ISIS was an unremittingly brutal and dystopian struggle, a multi-sided war of gritty local commandos and militias. Mike Giglio takes readers to the heart of this shifting, uncertain conflict, capturing the essence of a modern war.
At its peak, ISIS controlled a self-styled "caliphate" the size of Great Britain, with a population cast into servitude that numbered in the millions. Its territory spread across Iraq and Syria as its influence stretched throughout the wider world.
Giglio tells the story of the rise of the caliphate and the ramshackle coalition--aided by secretive Western troops and American airstrikes--that was assembled to break it down village by village, district by district. The story moves from the smugglers, traffickers, and jihadis working on the ISIS side to the victims of its zealous persecution and the local soldiers who died by the thousands to defeat it. Amid the battlefield drama, culminating in a climactic showdown in Mosul, is a dazzlingly human portrait of the destructive power of extremism, and of the tenacity and astonishing courage required to defeat it.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-291) and index.

The war against ISIS and the so-called caliphate it declared across Syria and Iraq was a battle to define not just the Middle East but the wider world. Growing from the aftermath of the U.S. war in Iraq and a brutal civil war in Syria, ISIS sought to usher in a new era of conflict as it launched terrorist attacks across Europe, while inflicting a savage extremism on the population in controlled. And the U.S. developed a new kind of war to stop it - one that relied heavily on the sacrifices of local soldiers who fought on behalf of the American cause. This struggle came to a climax in the Iraqi city of Mosul, the crown jewel of the caliphate, in the deadliest urban combat the world had seen in a generation. Few journalists got as close to the war, and to protagonists on both sides of it, as Mike Giglio, who spent six years reporting on the rise and fall of the ISIS proto-state. He traveled along the Turkey-Syria border with the smugglers and operatives who worked in ISIS's criminal and financial networks, accompanied antiquities traders to visit stolen artifacts that helped to fund the ISIS war effort, sat with human traffickers at the heart of the migrant crisis, met with ISIS defectors as they tried to free their minds from its grip, and embedded with local soldiers on the front lines. Behind the drama on the battlefield, the suspense was in how much ISIS might change the world before its cities fell and how many of America's allies it could kill along the way. This is a chilling portrait of the destructive power of extremism, and of the tenacity and astonishing courage required to defeat it.

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