The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State

(Paperback)

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Description

A timely and essential rethinking of what ISIS is and what it really wants Based on Graeme Wood's unprecedented access to supporters, recruiters, and high-ranking members of the most infamous jihadist group in the world, The War of the End of Times is a riveting, fast-paced deep dive into the apocalyptic dogma that informs the group's worldview, from the ideas that motivate it, to the "fatwa factory" that produces its laws, to its very specific plans for the future. By accepting that ISIS truly believes the end is nigh, we can understand its strategy-and predict what it will do next.

Reviews

Gripping, sobering and revelatory ... Unrivalled -- Tom Holland * New Statesman *
[A] hugely important book ... Indispensable -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *
Fascinating ... Highly readable ... The western military with its superior firepower can bomb Isis out of existence in Raqqa and Mosul as much as it likes, but we won't destroy the ideology if we don't understand what it is. This book goes a long way towards filling that gap -- Christina Lamb * Sunday Times *
Indispensable and gripping .... Wood's quest to understand the Islamic State is a round-the-world journey to the end of the night. As individuals, the men he encounters are misfits, even losers. But their millenarian Islamist ideology makes them the most dangerous people on the planet. -- Niall Ferguson

Author Bio

Graeme Wood is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and lecturer in political science at Yale University. He has been a Turkey and Kurdistan analyst for Jane's, a contributing editor to The New Republic, and books editor of Pacific Standard. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The American Scholar, The New Republic, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, and the International Herald Tribune. He lives in Connecticut, USA.