Shatter the Nations

November 11, 2019
The ISIS caliphate has been dismantled, but the conditions that led to its rise, and the appeal it held for extremists, remain, according to this searing debut from Atlantic writer Giglio. In dispatches from Egypt, Germany, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey in the years between 2011 and 2017, Giglio reports on Syria’s descent into multisided civil war, the origins of ISIS in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the smuggling of foreign jihadists across the Turkish-Syrian border, and the alliance of American and Iraqi special forces soldiers, Syrian rebels, and Kurdish militias that dislodged ISIS from the territory it held in Iraq and Syria. Giglio vividly describes the experience of coming under machine gun fire in a Humvee (“The feeling this gave me was always the same, both riled and afraid, like a trapped animal taunted by someone rattling its cage”), and his insights into the “strange ecosystem” of journalists, hustlers, and fixers that operate on the edges of war zones will be of interest even to readers who’ve had their fill of battle stories. His warning, meanwhile, that many jihadists and their families escaped ISIS territory before coalition forces moved in takes on frightening new relevance as U.S. troops withdraw from the region. Giglio’s probing, prescient narrative illuminates the global repercussions of a murky conflict.

October 1, 2019
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria grew out of the insurgent jihadist movements in the chaotic upheaval in those countries. Militants used the civil war in Syria and unprepared defenders in Iraq to seize territory and inflict terror far and wide. Giglio, a veteran journalist with the Atlantic, spent six years studying ISIS and the savage war, in which extremist medieval ideology and high-technology media campaigns coexist. He embedded with the elite Iraqi Special Forces, Counterterrorism units, and Kurdish YPG militia; interviewed countless actors in the underground black market of smugglers and traffickers that supported ISIS; and reports stories of myriad victims of the conflict. Drawing inspiration (and the book's title) from the biblical book of Jeremiah, Giglio puts readers on the ground with the soldiers in this well-written account. Shatter the Nations is an excellent and invaluable summation of the complex conflict in the Middle East from 2011-2017, shedding light on the murky circumstances behind so many political soundbites that inadequately cover terrorism and and plight of refugees.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)