Shatter the Nations: Isis and the War for the Caliphate

The 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 that was larger in size than Great Britain, with 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.

Mike Giglio is a Washington, DC-based journalist focused on war, terrorism and national security. He has reported extensively on the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine and done investigative work on topics such as ISIS's criminal and financial networks and the ways America wages its counterterrorism campaigns. Previously, he spent five years based in Istanbul as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek and BuzzFeed. His work has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award and has won the Arthur F. Burns Prize. He is a graduate of Davidson College and native of New York. Robert Fass is a veteran actor, winner of numerous Earphones Awards, and twice recipient of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration.

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