Download or read book The Raqqa Diaries written by Samer and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Everyone should spend a couple of hours of their life reading it, to remind themselves that, even in the darkest depth of human misery, the bravest souls still exist.' Sunday TimesSince ISIS occupied Raqqa in eastern Syria, it has become one of the most isolated and fear-ridden cities on earth. The sale of televisions has been banned, wearing trousers the wrong length is a punishable offence, and using a mobile phone is considered an unforgivable crime.No journalists are allowed in and the penalty for speaking to the western media is death by beheading.Despite this, after several months of nervy and often interrupted conversations, the BBC was able to make contact with a small activist group, Al-Sharqiya 24. Finally, courageously, one of their members agreed to write a personal diary about his experiences.Having seen friends and relatives butchered, his community's life shattered and the local economy ruined by these hate-fuelled extremists, Samer is fighting back in the only way he can- by telling the world what is happening to his beloved city.This is Samer's story.'Remarkable . . . rare, intimate . . . Samer is an understated hero of our time.' Anthony Loyd, The Times'A clarion call to all of us that we should not give up. Somewhere there is a voice in the wreckage.' Michael Palin'This is brutal non-fiction, plainly and urgently told.' Robin Yassin-Kassab, Guardian'The simple act of bearing witness is one of the most powerful human responses available . . .The Raqqa Diaries is so important.' Evening Standard

Download or read book Syria s Secret Library written by Mike Thomson and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable story of a small, makeshift library in the town of Daraya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during a four-year siege. Daraya lies on the fringe of Damascus, just southwest of the Syrian capital. Yet for four years it lived in another world. Besieged by government forces early in the Syrian Civil War, its people were deprived of food, bombarded by heavy artillery, and under the constant fire of snipers. But deep beneath this scene of frightening devastation lay a hidden library. While the streets above echoed with shelling and rifle fire, the secret world below was a haven of books. Long rows of well-thumbed volumes lined almost every wall: bloated editions with grand leather covers, pocket-sized guides to Syrian poetry, and no-nonsense reference books, all arranged in well-ordered lines. But this precious horde was not bought from publishers or loaned by other libraries--they were the books salvaged and scavenged at great personal risk from the doomed city above. The story of this extraordinary place and the people who found purpose and refuge in it is one of hope, human resilience, and above all, the timeless, universal love of literature and the compassion and wisdom it fosters.

Download or read book Jihad and Death written by Olivier Roy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islamic State has replaced Al Qaeda as the great global threat of the twenty-first century, the bogeyman we have all come to fear. But Daesh started as a local movement, rooted in the resentment of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria. It is they who have lost most in the geo-strategic shift in the balance of power in the region over the last thirty years, as Iranian-backed Shias have mobilised politically and advanced on the social and economic fronts. How has Islamic State been able to muster support far beyond its initial constituency in the Arab world and to attract tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, including converts to Islam, and seemingly countless supporters online? In this compelling intervention into the debate about Islamic State's origins and future prospects, the renowned French sociologist of religion, Olivier Roy, argues that the group mobilised a highly sophisticated narrative, reviving the myth of the Caliphate and recasting it into a modern story of heroism, death and nihilism, using a very contemporary aesthetic of violence, well entrenched amid a youth culture that has turned global and violent.

Download or read book The World Broke in Two written by Bill Goldstein and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist Named one of the best books of 2017 by NPR's Book Concierge A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism The World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins, all four are literally at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting, as Ulysses is published in February and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time begins to be published in England in the autumn. Yet, dismal as their prospects seemed in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway, Forster has, for the first time in nearly a decade, returned to work on the novel that will become A Passage to India, Lawrence has written Kangaroo, his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel, and Eliot has finished—and published to acclaim—“The Waste Land." As Willa Cather put it, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” and what these writers were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research, Bill Goldstein's The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.

Download or read book Joe Gould s Teeth written by Jill Lepore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New Yorker staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the dark, spellbinding tale of her restless search for the long-lost, longest book ever written, a century-old manuscript called “The Oral History of Our Time.” Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the twentieth century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound. Gould began his life’s work before the First World War, announcing that he intended to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him. “I am trying to preserve as much detail as I can about the normal life of every day people,” he explained, because “as a rule, history does not deal with such small fry.” By 1942, when The New Yorker published a profile of Gould written by the reporter Joseph Mitchell, Gould’s manuscript had grown to more than nine million words. But when Gould died in 1957, in a mental hospital, the manuscript was nowhere to be found. Then, in 1964, in “Joe Gould’s Secret,” a second profile, Mitchell claimed that “The Oral History of Our Time” had been, all along, merely a figment of Gould’s imagination. Lepore, unpersuaded, decided to find out. Joe Gould’s Teeth is a Poe-like tale of detection, madness, and invention. Digging through archives all over the country, Lepore unearthed evidence that “The Oral History of Our Time” did in fact once exist. Relying on letters, scraps, and Gould’s own diaries and notebooks—including volumes of his lost manuscript—Lepore argues that Joe Gould’s real secret had to do with sex and the color line, with modernists’ relationship to the Harlem Renaissance, and, above all, with Gould’s terrifying obsession with the African American sculptor Augusta Savage. In ways that even Gould himself could not have imagined, what Gould wrote down really is a history of our time: unsettling and ferocious.

Download or read book Guest House for Young Widows written by Azadeh Moaveni and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of thirteen women who joined, endured, and, in some cases, escaped life in the Islamic State—based on years of immersive reporting by a Pulitzer Prize finalist. FINALIST FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Toronto Star • The Guardian Among the many books trying to understand the terrifying rise of ISIS, none has given voice to the women in the organization; but women were essential to the establishment of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. Responding to promises of female empowerment and social justice, and calls to aid the plight of fellow Muslims in Syria, thousands of women emigrated from the United States and Europe, Russia and Central Asia, from across North Africa and the rest of the Middle East to join the Islamic State. These were the educated daughters of diplomats, trainee doctors, teenagers with straight-A averages, as well as working-class drifters and desolate housewives, and they joined forces to set up makeshift clinics and schools for the Islamic homeland they’d envisioned. Guest House for Young Widows charts the different ways women were recruited, inspired, or compelled to join the militants. Emma from Hamburg, Sharmeena and three high school friends from London, and Nour, a religious dropout from Tunis: All found rebellion or community in political Islam and fell prey to sophisticated propaganda that promised them a cosmopolitan adventure and a chance to forge an ideal Islamic community in which they could live devoutly without fear of stigma or repression. It wasn’t long before the militants exposed themselves as little more than violent criminals,more obsessed with power than the tenets of Islam, and the women of ISIS were stripped of any agency, perpetually widowed and remarried, and ultimately trapped in a brutal, lawless society. The fall of the caliphate only brought new challenges to women no state wanted to reclaim. Azadeh Moaveni’s exquisite sensitivity and rigorous reporting make these forgotten women indelible and illuminate the turbulent politics that set them on their paths.

Download or read book Poor but Sexy written by Agata Pyzik and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go West for work; but the East stays East, and West stays West. Caricatures abound - the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for 'the new Berlin' for hipsters. Against the stereotypes, Agata Pyzik peers behind the curtain to take a look at the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the 'West'). Neoliberalism and mass migration, post-punk and the Bowiephile obsession with the Eastern Bloc, Orientalism and 'self-colonization', the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, the possibility of a non-Western idea of modernity and futurism, and the place of Eastern Europe in any current revival of 'the idea of communism' – all are much more complex and surprising than they appear. Poor But Sexy refuses both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the 'good old days' and the equally desperate desire to become a 'normal part of Europe', reclaiming instead the idea an Other Europe. , ,

Download or read book The Rise of Islamic State written by Patrick Cockburn and published by Leftword Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though capable of staging spectacular attacks like 9/11, jihadist organizations were not a significant force on the ground when they first became notorious in the shape of al-Qa'ida at the turn of century. //Today, that's changed. Exploiting the missteps of the West's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, as well as its misjudgments in relation to Syria and the uprisings of the Arab Spring, jihadist organizations, of which ISIS is the most important, are swiftly expanding. They now control a geographical territory greater in size than Britain or Michigan, stretching from the Sunni heartlands in the north and west of Iraq through a broad swath of north-east Syria. On the back of their capture of Mosul and much of northern Iraq in June 2014, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been declared the head of a new caliphate that demands the allegiance of all Muslims. The secular, democratic politics that were supposedly at the fore of the Arab Spring have been buried by the return of the jihadis writing with customary calmness and clarity, and drawing on unrivaled experience as a reporter in the region, Cockburn analyzes the unfolding of one of the West's greatest foreign policy debacles and the rise of the new jihadis.//Patrick Cockburn is currently a Middle East correspondent for the Independent. His book on Iraq's recent history, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Awards. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009. He was named Foreign Commentator of the Year by the Comment Awards in 2013.

Download or read book Brothers of the Gun written by Marwan Hisham and published by One World. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, an intimate lens on the century’s bloodiest conflict, and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • “This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple’s extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends—fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq—joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another’s eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble. Marwan was there to witness and document firsthand the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. He watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He saw the country that ran through his veins—the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears—be destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape. Illustrated with more than eighty ink drawings by Molly Crabapple that bring to life the beauty and chaos, Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution—and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope. “A book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth.”—Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire “A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time.”—Angela Davis

Download or read book Constructions of Terrorism written by Michael Stohl and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-08 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication is part of the Constructions of Terrorism Research Project being carried out through a partnership between TRENDS Research & Advisory, Abu Dhabi, UAE, and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Download or read book Undercover Jihadi Bride written by Anna Erelle and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published as 'In the Skin of a Jihadist' Twenty-year-old 'Mélodie', a recent convert to Islam, meets the leader of an ISIS brigade on Facebook. In 48 hours he has 'fallen in love' with her, calls her every hour, urges her to marry him, join him in Syria in a life of paradise - and join his jihad. Anna Erelle is the undercover journalist behind 'Melodie'. Created to investigate the powerful propaganda weapons of Islamic State, 'Melodie' is soon sucked in by Bilel, right-hand man of the infamous Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An Iraqi for whose capture the US government has promised $10 million, al-Baghdadi is described by Time Magazine as the most dangerous man in the world and by himself as the caliph of Islamic State. Bilel shows off his jeep, his guns, his expensive watch. He boasts about the people he has just killed. With Bilel impatient for his future wife, 'Melodie' embarks on her highly dangerous mission, which - at its ultimate stage - will go very wrong ... Enticed into this lethal online world like hundreds of other young people, including many young British girls and boys, Erelle's harrowing and gripping investigation helps us to understand the true face of terrorism.

Download or read book All the Rage written by Darcy Lockman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do men do so little at home? Why do women do so much? Why don't our egalitarian values match our lived experiences? Journalist-turned-psychologist Darcy Lockman offers a clear-eyed look at the most pernicious problem facing modern parents—how progressive relationships become traditional ones when children are introduced into the household. In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly persists: the disproportionate amount of parental work that falls to women, no matter their background, class, or professional status. All the Rage investigates the cause of this pervasive inequity to answer why, in households where both parents work full-time and agree that tasks should be equally shared, mothers’ household management, mental labor, and childcare contributions still outweigh fathers’. How, in a culture that pays lip service to women’s equality and lauds the benefits of father involvement—benefits that extend far beyond the well-being of the kids themselves—can a commitment to fairness in marriage melt away upon the arrival of children? Counting on male partners who will share the burden, women today have been left with what political scientists call unfulfilled, rising expectations. Historically these unmet expectations lie at the heart of revolutions, insurgencies, and civil unrest. If so many couples are living this way, and so many women are angered or just exhausted by it, why do we remain so stuck? Where is our revolution, our insurgency, our civil unrest? Darcy Lockman drills deep to find answers, exploring how the feminist promise of true domestic partnership almost never, in fact, comes to pass. Starting with her own marriage as a ground zero case study, she moves outward, chronicling the experiences of a diverse cross-section of women raising children with men; visiting new mothers’ groups and pioneering co-parenting specialists; and interviewing experts across academic fields, from gender studies professors and anthropologists to neuroscientists and primatologists. Lockman identifies three tenets that have upheld the cultural gender division of labor and peels back the ways in which both men and women unintentionally perpetuate old norms. If we can all agree that equal pay for equal work should be a given, can the same apply to unpaid work? Can justice finally come home?

Download or read book Burn Our Bodies Down written by Rory Power and published by Macmillan Children's Books. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery – until she decides to return to her mother's hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself. Ever since Margot was born, it's been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot's questions. No history to hold on to. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along. But that's not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And when she finds a photograph pointing her to a town called Phalene, she leaves. But when Margot gets there, it's not what she bargained for. Margot's mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what's still there? Burn Our Bodies Down is a devastating and visceral horror-thriller about survival, the environment and family secrets the human condition from YA author Rory Power.

Download or read book 9 11 Unmasked written by David Ray Griffin and published by Olive Branch Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panel of experts highlight the problems with all major claims of the official account of the 9/11 attacks. Many Americans have been embarrassed by the Trump presidency. But Americans should also be embarrassed by the fact that this country's foreign policy since 2001, which has resulted in millions of deaths, has been based on a complex deception. 9/11 Unmasked is the result of a six-year investigation by an international review panel, which has provided 51 points illustrating the problematic status of all the major claims in the official account of the 9/11 attacks, some of which are obviously false. Most dramatically, the official account of the destruction of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7 could not possibly be true, unless the laws of physics were suspended that day. But other claims made by the official account—including the claims that the 9/11 planes were taken over by al-Qaeda hijackers, that one of those hijackers flew his plane into the Pentagon, and that passengers on the planes telephoned people on the ground—are also demonstrably false. The book reports only points about which the panel reached consensus by using the “best-evidence” consensus model employed in medical research. The panel is composed of experts about 9/11 from many disciplines, including physics, chemistry, structural engineering, aeronautical engineering, and jurisprudence. Many Americans have been embarrassed by the Trump presidency. But Americans should also be embarrassed by the fact that this country's foreign policy since 2001, which has resulted in millions of deaths, has been based on a complex deception. 9/11 Unmasked is the result of a six-year investigation by an international review panel, which has provided 51 points illustrating the problematic status of all the major claims in the official account of the 9/11 attacks, some of which are obviously false. Most dramatically, the official account of the destruction of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7 could not possibly be true, unless the laws of physics were suspended that day. But other claims made by the official account—including the claims that the 9/11 planes were taken over by al-Qaeda hijackers, that one of those hijackers flew his plane into the Pentagon, and that passengers on the planes telephoned people on the ground—are also demonstrably false. The book reports only points about which the panel reached consensus by using the “best-evidence” consensus model employed in medical research. The panel is composed of experts about 9/11 from many disciplines, including physics, chemistry, structural engineering, aeronautical engineering, and jurisprudence.

Download or read book The Daughters of Kobani written by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The extraordinary story of the women who took on the Islamic State and won “The Daughters of Kobani is an unforgettable and nearly mythic tale of women's power and courage. The young women profiled in this book fought a fearsome war against brutal men in impossible circumstances—and proved in the process what girls and women can accomplish when given the chance to lead. Brilliantly researched and respectfully reported, this book is a lesson in heroism, sacrifice, and the real meaning of sisterhood. I am so grateful that this story has been told.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love “Absolutely fascinating and brilliantly written, The Daughters of Kobani is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand both the nobility and the brutality of war. This is one of the most compelling stories in modern warfare.” —Admiral William H. McRaven, author of Make Your Bed In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women's rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of: Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States. In the process, these women would spread their own political vision, determined to make women's equality a reality by fighting—house by house, street by street, city by city—the men who bought and sold women. Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, The Daughters of Kobani is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world's best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. Drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews, bestselling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon introduces us to the women fighting on the front lines, determined to not only extinguish the terror of ISIS but also prove that women could lead in war and must enjoy equal rights come the peace. In helping to cement the territorial defeat of ISIS, whose savagery toward women astounded the world, these women played a central role in neutralizing the threat the group posed worldwide. In the process they earned the respect—and significant military support—of U.S. Special Operations Forces. Rigorously reported and powerfully told, The Daughters of Kobani shines a light on a group of women intent on not only defeating the Islamic State on the battlefield but also changing women's lives in their corner of the Middle East and beyond.

Download or read book ISIS Brides written by Bridey Heing and published by Enslow Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the promise of glorious holy war and a wife, more than 20,000 foreign fighters flowed into Iraq and Syria, leaving the Islamic State hard-pressed to provide enough wives for the fighters. With the number of foreign women estimated at a few hundred, ISIS has turned to draconian measures like slavery, temporary marriages, and even child brides. Women captives of the group who managed to escape tell tales of terror and abuse despite the glowing promises of those who recruit women for the so-called Islamic State. This book explores the dangers for women and girls caught in the path of ISIS and how they're used by the group as both rewards for fighters and as warriors in their own right.

Download or read book Syrian Civil War written by Robert M. Kerr and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable resource provides students with a comprehensive overview of the Syrian Civil War, with roughly 100 in-depth articles by leading scholars on an array of key topics and several important primary source documents. This important work provides a thorough introduction to the origins, events, and impact of the devastating Syrian Civil War, illuminating the complexities and the consequences of this long-lasting conflict. From the emergence of the war in early 2011 following the Arab Spring that swept across the Middle East, to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), through the re-establishing of control of most of the country by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's armed forces by late 2018, this comprehensive work covers every aspect of this conflict that has devastated millions. The book begins with a detailed overview of the Syrian Civil War that provides context to each of the reference entries that follow. The introductory material also includes essays on the causes and consequences of the war. Next comes the A–Z reference entries on such topics as Bashar al-Assad, chemical weapons, the refugee crisis, the Battle of Saraqeb, and White Helmets. In addition, the book includes about a dozen curated and contextualized primary source documents along with a comprehensive chronology and an extensive bibliography.