THE ISIS READER BLOG: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement
This blog serves as our platform to discuss all issues related to the continuing evolution of the Islamic State movement, with ties to our 2020 Hurst/Oxford book of primary sources and commentary.
The ISIS Reader is the first book to trace the evolution of the Islamic State movement through its milestone texts and speeches. Telling the ‘inside story’ of the Islamic State movement over fifteen chapters, readers are taken on a multidecade journey through the tumultuous evolution of one of history’s bloodiest terrorist organizations. From Islamic State’s origins under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the 1990s to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019, The ISIS Reader will help anyone — students and journalists, military personnel, civil servants and inquisitive observers — to better understand how a largely dismissed cadre of jihadis would change the course of history.
An absolutely essential reference work for understanding ISIS’s astonishing rise and fall. – Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University
A remarkable work of textual historiography… Scholarly yet accessible, it is an indispensable resource. – Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, George Washington University
The book is rigorous and authoritative–an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the Islamic State phenomenon. – Dr. Anne Stenersen, FFR (Norway)
…the seminal work on ISIS. Painstaking details. Expert analysis. Page turning storytelling. – Dr. Gina Ligon, Director of the NCITE Center of Excellence
…three leading jihadism experts have parsed the ISIS corpus and produced a fascinating guide through the Caliphate’s dark ideological world. – Dr. Thomas Hegghammer, FFI (Norway)
An enormously useful set of carefully curated primary sources that cuts through the fog of when, why and how ISIS emerged and evolved. – Dr. Elisabeth Kendall, University of Oxford
Each author of The ISIS Reader is individually brilliant and authoritative. Together, they have created an essential work… J.M. Berger, co-author of ISIS: The State of Terror