BLACK FLAGS by Joby Warrick

Joby Warrick spoke about his book, Black Flags, at Politics & Prose on Saturday, October 3, 2015.

In his second book, Warrick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist and author of The Triple Agent, follows up his suspenseful story of Jordanian al-Qaeda agent Humam Khalil al-Balawi with this equally dramatic chronicle of the rise of ISIS. Examining events and beliefs but most of all the actions of one man, Warrick tracks the rise of the extremist group by following Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beginning with his release in 1999 from a Jordanian prison through his consolidation of power when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, and on to his leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq, now known as ISIS.