Shatter the Nations: ISIS and the War for the Caliphate

by Mike Giglio

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" the size of Great Britain, with a 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Middle East, War, Islam, Terrorism

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seamless account vividly portrays the apocalyptic environment experienced in Iraq and Syria under the regime of ISIS. With this firsthand report, the reader is taken on an unforgettable journey witnessing the conflict in Raqqa, the Battle for Mosul, and the Syrian refugee crisis. From the underground traders to the extortion to the genocide to the battles, this is an important history for Westerners to comprehend.

I specifically wanted to note the presentation of people that the author encounters in this book. This includes but is not limited to smugglers, ISIS leaders and members, Iraq Counter-Terrorism Force soldiers, ISOF, Kurdish soldiers, looters, Assad supporters, bomb makers, passport counterfeit artists, etc.… Because of his relationships with each person, as a reader you get to know each one. They became “real” rather than obscure names who are easy to forget. It was distressing when one would die because you would become attached to them, you felt like you knew them.

Throughout the entire book, I felt like a fly on the wall watching everything play out. Overall, it was an electrifying and stimulating account. Written as a narrative, he made it easy for the average laymen to comprehend. The chapters are ordered sequentially by month and year which made his narrative easy to follow. Again, this is great nonfiction read for the average reader.

Highly recommend. I learned a lot and will be looking for more from this author. Nonfiction solid 5 stars. Now it only leaves us with the question, will this happen again?
Many thanks to Public Affairs, Mike Giglio, and NetGalley for this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Murtaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

However little they understood them in the first place, it's clear now that most people in the West have tired of hearing about the so-called "forever wars" of the Middle East. This book should change their minds. Enthrallingly written, it is one of the most informed, visceral and thoughtful accounts of the past decade of violence and state-collapse that began with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In many ways, the war that began with the invasion have never ended. It simply paused and took a breather, before reawakening and spreading its tentacles across the region. The attention span of the American media and public has not been long enough to keep interest in this rolling crisis and to grasp connections between events, but for the people forced to live through them there is no alternative. This book starts in 2011 goes forward from there: through the brief hopeful flickering of the Arab Spring to the horrors of armed counterrevolution and extremism.

Much of the book is based on news reporting the author has done over the years. But there are also additional stories and episodes which did not make it into those articles. It is a personal reflection on war and in many ways is the sequel (a superior one in my opinion) to Dexter Filkins "The Forever War," which looked at the initial years of U.S. presence in the region. Since 2011, the Middle East's wars have raged on with less U.S. troops in theatre. But Americans remain a heavy presence in the sky with their warplanes and in the shadows with their special forces operations. This book profiles many Iraqis and Syrians: ordinary civilians, soldiers, ISIS members, smugglers and more. But there are also some profiles of American soldiers who have continued fighting a damage-control war that their countrymen long ago stopped caring about. Throughout the narrative the full tragedy of war comes through. It is like a collective generational misfortune that almost no one can escape. People "choose" to become militants, soldiers, refugees, smugglers or terrorists for reasons that bear little resemblance to the ones we assume from afar. This is a painful look at what happens to people when their country suddenly stops existing.

Unlike most other books about ISIS which were rushed out to meet a brief upsurge in public demand following terrorist attacks in the West, this one is is based on years of on-the-ground reporting. It is written as a narrative and is lighter on analysis. When it does get into analysis, however, it's really exceptional. The writing is immersive and makes the book a page-turner in the truest sense. I'd recommend the book to anyone as a necessary contextualization for the past decade in the Middle East, but also as a timeless story about war. This is a fitting literary eulogy to the terrible conflicts of this era. If we don't pause sometimes and reflect — as this book does so well — it will be impossible to make sense of what may come next.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shatter the Nations by Mike Giglio came out- and my friend Paul recommended it- at a convenient time, just as I was wishing I had more context for understanding two events that had been in the news: Trump's withdrawal of troops from Northeastern Syria and the killing of al-Baghdadi. The book certainly provides that context, but covers a lot of other ground as well. Giglio touches on the beginning of the Arab Spring, especially the Egyptian Revolution, before narrowing his focus on the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, as well as the wartime milieu that develops in Turkish cities like Antakya, near the (then) porous border with Syria.

One of the reviews here calls the book "nonfiction that wants to be fiction", but that's just a refusal to judge it on its own terms. I'm sure there have been and will be enough books that chronicle the rise of ISIS in impartial detail; Giglio's book is something different, namely first-hand war reporting, telling a factual story with a novelist's eye. This approach is not only valid but edifying, at least for me; it allowed me to see a broad range of people impacted by the war in a way that I seldom do on the news, and helped me to understand why many of them make the decisions they do. Giglio, for example, meets dealers in Syrian antiquities that have been looted by ISIS (selling them, from ISIS's point of view, a) makes money, and b) helps to erase evidence of the region's pre-Islamic past); human traffickers who help people in Syria get by land to Turkey or by sea to Greece (unless the boat gets overcrowded and ends up sinking), no questions asked; traders in stolen U.S. passports, a business that I'd always imagined involved some kind of editing software but which instead apparently requires the trafficker to scroll through pictures of migrants on his phone until he finds a suitable doppelganger; and a Syrian kid called Leo who becomes Giglio's translator, deported from the U.S. after ten years in New Jersey to a country he barely remembered. "The mukhabarat, Syria's secret police, detained him from the plane. The officer who beat and questioned him in a dimly lit interrogation room at the airport was suspicious of Leo's time in America and accused him of being in the CIA." It sounds like a relatively minor act of violence in the context of the brutal Syrian civil war, but it reminds me of the terrible consequences for something as arbitrary as nationality- that nothing inherently separates any of us from violence except sometimes a document, which can easily be taken away or rendered meaningless. You may have lived in America for ten years, that beating must have communicated to Leo, but you were born here, which means you can be beaten, tortured and killed indiscriminately. No wonder so many Syrians were fed up with these bastards. They were right to be...weren't they?

I'm sure they were, but there's also the principle of the devil you know. That's the side the Syrian Kurds came down on, at least initially, until they were attacked by ISIS, and Giglio helps the reader to understand that position:

Syrian Kurds were oppressed under the Assad dynasty, which viewed them as potential separatists. For decades, the regime had carried out campaigns of forced assimilation and ethnic cleansing against its Kurdish citizens...When the Kurds had protested over their treatment a decade earlier, they were killed in Rojava's streets. Many had been wary of participating in Syria's Arab Spring uprising, understanding the kind of suffering the regime was capable of inflicting. Instead, when the civil war erupted, Kurdish leaders made a deal with their longtime enemy in hopes of keeping Rojava out of it.

One of the many ideas Giglio explores is how the Syrian revolution went wrong- hijacked by extremists (as revolutions often are) from the very beginning, when Assad opened the regime's prisons to create chaos and discredit the revolution, as well as, Giglio contends, shortchanged by the U.S. under the Obama administration. I've been trying to get myself out of the habit, especially as the spectacle of the presidential election year approaches, of thinking that there are only two ideas in the world, and Giglio's analysis throughout is evenhanded, reserved and nuanced. I've often thought that the moment when Obama decided not to attack Syria- when he allowed the Pentagon generals and the foreign-policy establishment and Hillary Clinton and John McCain to think of him as weak- was one of the stronger moments of his presidency. It was a decision that seemed reasonable in the aftermath of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. Then again, maybe that was a crucial window of time when moderate rebels could have been, should have been, supported. I don't know enough to say for sure, but Giglio seems to think so:

The rebels we met were a mix of soldiers who had defected, first-time fighters, and Islamists. Those who'd left the Syrian military had mostly joined the Free Syrian Army, an alliance of rebel groups that were more professional and moderate than their counterparts...they wanted U.S. backing. In August 2011, Obama had stated that Assad should step down, leaving many Syrians to wonder what America might do to make it happen. Rebels could take encouragement from the fact that so many representatives of the U.S. government were in southern Turkey...we also learned that CIA officers were holding meetings with rebel leaders, asking what kind of weapons they needed. Yet, as summer turned to fall, the factions gaining strength in the rebellion were not the moderates who sought to be U.S. allies but the hard-line Islamists, many of whom had established steady sources of support via backers like the Gulf financiers...

When Giglio talks to one ex-Syrian Army officer, the man tells him that

...even the lighter weapons he did receive [from the U.S.] were in short supply- just enough, in his estimation, to keep the balance from tipping to either side...it was a line I would hear again and again from the CIA's rebel allies over the years as America kept them alive but made sure they never got too strong, wary of what might happen if Assad were defeated.

The reaction among ISIS's leaders to Trump's election a few years later is telling, if not especially surprising. Every morning within the territory of the caliphate, apparently, imams would meet with fighters assigned to them, to lead them in prayer and issue instructions. "One morning in November" however, as an ISIS defector later explains to Giglio, the men

...found their imam unusually excited. There was no discussion of doctrine or strategy. Instead, he delivered news. Donald Trump had just been elected U.S president. This was a great gift to ISIS, he said. In the days that followed...ISIS leaders in Raqqa hailed Trump's win as divine intervention. "They told us that victory is at hand and that God has sent the pig Trump as clear evidence of this", [the defector] said. "And they said that now God will make the Americans start fighting amongst themselves..."

Which is to say that the U.S. had dropped its veneer of respectability. Muslims everywhere would finally see that assimilation was impossible (I suppose ISIS has skilled enough propagandists that they didn't show their men any clips of the protests in response to Trump's proposed travel ban a few months later). In other words, "ISIS was eager to show that Trump's rhetoric- from his call for a travel ban against Muslims to his promise that the airstrikes he ordered against ISIS would pay far less heed to civilian harm- meant that ISIS had been right about America and its Western allies." Meanwhile, the Russian bombing campaign since 2015 had been even more indiscriminate than America's, sending greater numbers of refugees abroad and thereby lending greater rhetorical firepower to the Islamophobic and right-wing politicians that both Putin and ISIS, however at odds they might be otherwise, would prefer to succeed in Europe and the U.S.

Giglio allows himself to draw in echoes of other conflicts. At times his narrative made me think of the World War II memoirs of writers like Zweig, Koestler, Origo, Serge- the collapse of the state and the rule of law, the paranoia, the suspicion of refugees, the frantic need for documents, safety on one side of a border and death on the other. Giglio remembers events as seemingly far afield as the time he was taken prisoner by separatists in eastern Ukraine, and his abductors were "...unsure what to do, hurt me or help me, as if the picture were flickering- between friend and enemy, war and peace." But it's only appropriate that he would think of Ukraine, which is another country where what I think Timothy Snyder would call a "civilizational claim" (in this case Putin's claim that Ukraine is not a real country) was used as justification for the dissolution of a border. The picture must have similarly flickered for that Syrian kid Leo, when he got to the airport in Syria- between safety and violence, rule of law and its absence- and Giglio remembers that it flickered for Dexter Filkins in New York on September 11th, Filkins having written in The Forever War about how familiar the events of that day felt to him, due to the places in which he'd been living and working. Less than two years later, we went to war in Iraq. "I wondered if", Giglio writes,

...when a country was at war for so long but only a select few ever waged it, the rest of society began to go...crazy. Some played at civil war while others vowed to flee to Canada as political refugees, and too many Americans seemed to want to pull a bit of conflict into their lives just when so many people around the world were risking everything to escape from it.

I notice that Mike is around my age, which means he must have been around 18 in 2003, at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. Members of our generation went off- some killed, some maimed, some ending up with PTSD- essentially so Cheney could make money and Bush could resolve his Oedipus complex. Mike didn't go, as he notes in the book, neither did I (I fell for a different swindle and ended up more than $100,000 in debt, but that's another story), and so this detachment from our own history applies to us as well.

Detachment must be one of the characteristics of evil. I re-watched The Third Man last weekend, and this time I was really struck by that great scene on the ferris wheel. Joseph Cotton confronts Orson Welles about the children who have been killed as a result of his illicit penicillin scheme, and Welles points to the people on the ground far below. "Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those...dots stopped moving forever?" Having just read this book, I couldn't help but think of the Syrian civilians who have been killed in U.S. airstrikes. Sometimes Giglio hears stories from Syrians in Turkey, and in one chapter he and a partner visit "liberated" cities in Syria; they never stay longer than twenty minutes, since they never know who among the locals might still be with ISIS and surreptitiously making a call at that exact moment, but there's no shortage of stories. Later, in Mosul, Giglio finds a large house that's been destroyed by a U.S. airstrike, the airstrike having killed over 100 civilians.

"No matter what they do, the Americans, they're not going to bring them back", said the man who'd lost six family members. "Even if the strike killed one or two ISIS guys, does it make sense?"

He pulled out his phone. "Do you want to see a picture of my dead brother?"

...The Obama administration had sold the American public on a certain kind of war. It was meant to be guilt-free. Keeping in line with that aim- and with no NGOs or journalists on the ground in ISIS territory to challenge the narrative- the United States insisted that its air attacks almost never killed civilians. As Munzer and I sought out victims and witnesses of those attacks, we saw that this was obviously not true. Over the course of a month, we documented about a dozen cases where U.S. strikes had killed civilians but the official U.S. line was that only ISIS members had died. We knew there must be many more, and even U.S. diplomats privately told me the numbers were much higher.

Now to play devil's advocate, it's conceivable that such tragedy is still part of the best overall possible solution, at least conceivable that every other solution is even worse. Mike Giglio is wise enough not to tell the reader what to think, but what seems notable to me is that we're generally happy in the U.S. to not even entertain these incredibly difficult moral questions. Entertain these questions however, allow yourself a sense of the arbitrariness of time, place and identity, and the picture starts to flicker again, between us and them. But while you can find manufactured controversy on TV any time of day or night (is it okay for Colin Kapernick to kneel during the anthem?), there's almost no cultural discussion at all about the fact that when we bomb ISIS-held cities, or use drones, or supply weapons to the Saudis, civilians in faraway places die. Dots.

What about that context I was looking for, then? Well, the book ends on an ominous note, with Giglio learning that many of the more acquisitive members of ISIS have been bribing their way out of the city of Raqqa (soon to fall to the YPG), while others make their way to ISIS satellites in Afghanistan, Libya and the Philippines. One of the things that seems to separate ISIS from al-Qaeda is its decentralized structure, which suggests that neither the death of al-Baghdadi nor the loss of territory means that the group is by any means defeated. As Giglio writes,

...while al-Qaeda had focused on sophisticated, high-profile operations, ISIS embraced the ordinary. Shooting up random office parks and driving trucks through crowds were the kinds of attacks that made it seem like anyone could be a threat. They were designed to get people to turn their suspicions on each other.

And in that way, ISIS on one hand and the far-right in the U.S. and Europe on the other are mutually reinforcing. Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Northeastern Syria happened too recently to be included here, but it seems to provide a devastating epilogue. Over 10,000 Kurds died in the years-long fight against ISIS, many more wounded and crippled, and now we've left them, for seemingly no particular reason, to be murdered by Erdogan, or to initiate an uneasy alliance with Assad. Assad benefits, Erdogan benefits, and ISIS benefits. The Kurds lose, as do any Syrians who wanted to create a decent country...or any country at all, really.

[Paltia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outside the heart it becomes very dark. All those bombs and another nearly completed genocide. I keep thinking of the author’s description of the toys scattered by the wayside as people fled. Where do you go when there is nowhere to run?

[Scott Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A grunt’s-eye view of the bitter war to destroy the ISIS Caliphate, Shatter the Nations by award-winning journalist Mike Giglio opens with a cliffhanger from near the story’s end. Giglio is embedded with Iraqi special forces as they begin the push to recapture Mosul from ISIS when the Humvee he’s riding in becomes boxed in while trying to evade a suicide car bomb.

As a means of setting the stage for the remainder of the book, this prologue is exceptional as it showcases not only the type of warfare and warriors in this brutal conflict, but also Giglio’s keen eye for detail and descriptive ability. The reader finds out what happened with the suicide car in the final section of the book, after the author steps back to examine how he ended up in that Humvee outside Mosul. The rise of ISIS and establishment of the Caliphate are addressed in broad terms, but the focus is on the people — dissidents, merchants, fighters, smugglers, soldiers, and civilians — caught up in the war.

Giglio’s examination of the human impacts of the war reminded me at various times of Peter Maass’ exceptional Love Thy Neighbor about the Bosnian War and Michael Herr’s Dispatches on Vietnam. Just as Herr deconstructed the post-WWII stereotype of American soldiers being stolid, John Waynesqe ‘dogfaces,’ Giglio’s unvarnished portraits of the combatants on both sides in Syria and Iraq are a welcome counter to the chiseled and buff soldiers featured in too many movies and books.

In addition to those in the warzone, Giglio spends time on the peripheries with smugglers of people and commodities, fighters on R&R, and defectors from ISIS, as well as examining how the Caliphate was organized and operated. These vignettes are illuminating frequently surprising and at least one was, for me, heartbreaking.

Modern war is brutal and all too frequently indifferent to the suffering of innocents, and Giglio doesn’t shy away from addressing these harsh truths. ISIS deliberately placed targetable units and facilities among the civilian population, greatly increasing the chance of errant bombs and missiles killing non-combatants. Giglio visits some of the homes destroyed in this manner, including one building where more than one hundred civilians were killed in an airstrike — an outcome of war too often ignored or unheard by Americans.

Shatter the Nations was an exceptional read, and I’m eager to read more of this journalist’s work.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timely, relevant, and gripping. A must-read.

Once I started reading, I couldn't put Shatter the Nations down. Giglio provides beautifully-captured and intimate insight into the hearts and minds of soldiers, rebels, war-opportunists, and tragic victims of the ISIS conflict in the Middle East. He pulls you right into his harrowing experiences; into Humvees being riddled with bullets, witnessing a violent beating in the back of a prison bus, listening in on two powerful men whose egos are gambling with thousands of lives, in a busy cafe having a paranoid conversation that could be his last. And aside from being a page-turner, this book will give you a completely unique perspective on the recent withdrawal of US troops from Syria. Drop everything and read it now!

[Marcos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very enjoyable book. It illuminates the conflict in Syria and gives an account of the ways human lives are affected by war. Giglio's writing style grabs hold of the reader throughout the telling of his story while providing enough details to understand without overwhelming. The notes at the end are a testament to the thorough research done in the book's creation.

The story told, about a young journalist's time spent covering the war-torn region between Turkey and Syria, provides readers a glimpse into the struggles all war journalists face in an effort to record history as it unfolds.

Giglio's gift for storytelling creates a sense of the conflict at large while maintaining the focus on his own experiences. It's a different take on non-fiction, one that breathes life into normally dry subject matter.

Before reading this book, America's struggle against ISIS seemed, to me, to be a tangled mess involving too many unique groups to track. Giglio, by sharing his story, manages to distill the conflict down to its essence and gives context to Trump's recent decision to withdraw support from Kurdish forces.

I recommend you read this book, especially if you're interested in reading about the conflict in the Middle East from someone who experienced it firsthand. It should be of interest to others who care about America's role overseas.

[Clif · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm about to enter my 7th decade of a life that has been completely free of adversity. I don't know the sound of gunfire, I've never seen a corpse or buildings perforated with artillery damage. I don't live with any injury or suffer from a lack of food or medicine. In no way can I know the horrors seen by so many in places like Bosnia, Cambodia, or Syria where family member deaths by violence is common. I know of their suffering only by way of literature (I don't watch TV news) which is, I believe, the most authentic way of approaching, no more than that, an understanding of the lives of those who have been as unlucky as I have been lucky.

It is a characteristic of empire, such as that of the United States, and a characteristic of leadership, such as that of American presidents, to order destruction from total safety with complete lack of experience of the destruction unleashed, to order mass killing with little concern for the actual victims that always include the innocent. I believe it is a responsibility of the American people to the many who have died under the heading of "keeping us safe" to seek understanding of the situations our leaders all too easily create or exacerbate while we are able to revel in entertainment and leisure far from the chaos.

Mike Giglio offers in Shatter the Nations a grand tour centering on the rise of ISIS as a result of the American war against Iraq. Starting from a safe refuge in a hotel frequented by journalists in Istanbul, Giglio seeks out those who can best expose him to all sides of the seemingly endless warfare in the area. Along the way he relates the histories of the peoples and places that he visits as we hear the views of those whose lives have been shredded by war.

Though for obvious reasons he is not able to get inside areas held by ISIS, he is able to make contact with people who give aid to ISIS, even one who openly supports it. He meets those who have no love for ISIS yet support it through smuggling material and/or recruits in order to survive from day to day.

His method is to get as close as possible to the front line where he can engage with a Syrian in one faction or another, or a Kurd (in either the YPG or Peshmerga) or an Iraqi. Ultimately he is able to embed with American trained Iraqi Special Forces who drive (literally, in Humvees) for the liberation of Mosul from ISIS. He survives but others nearby do not. He provides a harrowing account of riding in a Humvee that, though armored, is quite vulnerable to ISIS built VBIED's (vehicle borne improvised explosive devices); ordinary cars and trucks loaded with explosives, shielded with steel plates and driven by suicides into the Humvees. The only defense is destruction of the oncoming car-bomb before it gets close.

This is an excellent book that I recommend to readers, bested only by Anthony Loyd's My War Gone By, I Miss It So about the Balkans conflict. Both deal with the chaos of battle between multiple parties that shift alliances while ranging over the lands of helpless people who must witness the destruction of all they know, if they can avoid death.

[Mona · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a nonfiction which wants to be a fiction.

Author describes his trips to Syria, Turkey, Egypt when he worked as a journalist during the war. The form of this book is partially report and partially diary where he tell us about random people he met, random places he saw, describes his feelings and observations of the surrounding including hotels where he stayed, what he smoked, what he bought at the market etc. Narration jumps between locations in a matter of one line without any particular logic reason. There is no well defined plot here, no defined chronology of events, people come and go with no purpose or added value to the book, reader does not have enough time to get to know them in any deeper way and wonders why this person was even mentioned.

For me, this book didn't have much of informative or educational value in subject of politics, war or any other, which I personally expect from nonfiction book. And unfortunately it didn't engage me on the emotional level either.

When it comes to pros- topic is interesting, I admire author's courage to go to the war zone, I liked the definitions at the beginning of the book. Also, author can write. I think he may be better in short forms, like newspaper articles or possibly fiction books considering his descriptive style and his loose relation to facts per se.

He can write. Just not a good nonfiction.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for free copy of this book in exchange for honest review.

[Jake Elliman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read that helps understand Daesh and what led up to their military successes and domination of regions of Syria and Iraq, as well as their eventual downfall.

Peppered with fascinating characters, whose motivations are interrogated with sympathy. These include smugglers with ties to Daesh, fighters for Daesh who left after witnessing atrocities and soldiers with the Golden Division, Iraq's American trained special forces that took many losses fighting Daesh in battles across Iraq and played a key role in its eventual defeat.

The accounts of Daesh explosive armoured car attacks are harrowing and really engaging. The whole book moves with a legato pace - it is incredibly readable and I would say a necessity for any reader wanting to understand Daesh and the complex situation that led to it's criminal and genocidal rule in Syria and Iraq.

[Fares · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written. Captures the reality of the war and the crisis accurately from the eyes of Mike, the reporter. Recommended.

[Ed Dougherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know what it does for me to always go back to books about war and terrorism. It’s been like 20 years now. Maybe I should stop? It’s not like I do anything with this dark knowledge and it probably doesn’t help my depression. But this is one of the best of them!

[vs · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent first-hand account of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Syrian civil war, and the fight against ISIS, as well as a glimpse into the insanity of contemporary conflict. Also interesting for anyone who wants to know what conflict journalists actually do, how they get their stories etc.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firsthand account from Giglio, who was embedded in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and everywhere in between chronicling the rise of ISIS and the coalition forces that eventually fought back. As such, we are taken to early conflicts in Raqqa, the genocide that happens in Sinjar, the road and battle to Mosul, as well as the refugee crisis resulting from the Syrian civil war and ISIS's brutality. Giglio touches on so much - not just the battles, but the smuggling and black markets and various cultural tensions and conflicts - that helps piece together a better understanding of what happened, and continues to be a force on what is happening in the region.

One of the strengths of the book is Giglio's contacts, leading to a diverse cast of individual experiences - from the soldiers, both in the Iraq counter-terrorism divisions, Kurdish fighters, and even ISIS leaders and members, to ancillary players such as smugglers, artifact looters, and passport counterfeit artists. This results in a more comprehensive view and understanding.

The intimacy of the book - from Giglio's account of the various individuals to the description of the battles and effects of war - particularly the Yazidi genocide that occurred at Sinjar and the road/battle to Mosul - are haunting, and lasting. Its a book I'm glad I read, to better understand a major source of conflict from the last decade and its impact on various political events; but also because of the humanity it conveys, and the reminder of what is lost due to war and extremism.

Really powerful, informative, great read.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journalist on the ground in Syria Iraq and turkey during rise and fall of isis. Such a depressing read it took a month to finish the book. Vast majority of decent ordinary people, overwhelmed by a relatively small group of violent misguided young men who think their daily atrocities are justified by some higher purpose. So depressing. Humans at their best and their worst.

Glad I read it. Appreciate the first hand account from the fringes of the caliphate. But I need to read some lighter material now for a while.

Isis and rebel leader talking on mobiles daily to troll each other
Database of isis application forms , day spent calling the listed emergency contacts
Joy of isis member calling next of kin with the good news of young mans martyrdom

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels like everyone has opinions about ISIS, Syria, and the Middle East in general, but I don't think many of us know what the heck is actually happening. Giglio doesn't seek to answer many overarching questions, instead giving numerous engagingly written first-hand accounts of his experiences in the middle of the war. Vague disdain for the west's apathetic intervention pointedly lingers throughout.

I found it disjointed with a murky beginning and end defined only by his tour in the war. To be fair, it's exactly what it bills itself. These are dispatches, not a narrative or analysis. Each chapter was deeply interesting in its own respect.
After this book I feel as though I've barely waded into this subject and need to learn more.

[Brandon Bierley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. The title led me to believe it would be about ISIS - and, really, it only is in a peripheral way. It's not a history or a documentation of ISIS exactly - it's far more a journalist's memoir of spending time with the forces who fight ISIS. It did give a solid perspective of that much, I must admit, but it is definitely not what I was expecting. After finishing, I know much more about the damage ISIS has done to civilians and the stories of the men who fight them, but little more about ISIS than I did when I started.

Copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Misti Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. My heart goes out to the yazedee and Iraqi people, all they have known is violence, and death. Even those who just want to be good, can’t seem to escape it it’s always there. It’s always one thing after another with Iraq, but I feel that is due to the U.S. leaving them when they needed us most. I feel like we created a vacuum of violence and turning our backs on them. We killed a lot of innocent people, but claiming we didn’t they were ISIS, it didn’t fit the Obama or Trump agenda to speak the truth. The government has never been honest to us.

I have more of an understanding of the refugees from Syria, Turkey, Iraq ect.

[Rebekah Sanderlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely riveting look at the formation, rise and impact of ISIS. The author does an excellent job of showing the group’s brutality in a clear-eyed way, accurate but not graphic. I considered myself fairly knowledgeable about ISIS before reading this, but every chapter held information I hadn’t previously known. I found myself extremely moved by the personal stories in the book and terrified for the author as he exposed himself to ISIS again and again in order to get the story.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shatter the Nations is a very good journalistic look at the human stories and the front line fighting in the War on ISIS. You can actually go on missions with the Iraqi forces as they fight to liberate their country, and understand the very human pain they feel. This is one of those books of modern Middle Eastern history worth reading and keeping around.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic account of the rise of ISIS and the incredible sacrifices paid by the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Force (ICTF) in the fight to defeat them.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is seriously an astonishing piece of work. One of the best non-fiction books on the region I’ve read.

[Michael Citrino · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a detailed look at how and why the Middle East is in the state it's in now. It's a very interesting and enlightening read.