Ten non-fictions that offer insights into the world

Black Flags by Joby Warrick. [Photo/Agencies]

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Author: Joby Warrick

Black Flags gives a character-driven account of the rise of ISIS, showing how Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – a terrorist mastermind and architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East – arose in a remote Jordanian prison and developed the militia that later become the world's greatest threat. Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Western government led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swathes of Syria and Iraq.

What they say:

"Joby Warrick weaves Black Flags with the tradecraft of a spy, the mind of an investigative reporter, and the pen of a novelist. The picture that emerges is sometimes hard to bear: of brutal ISIS torturers and Jordanian interrogators, of bumbling US leaders, of American intelligence services that still can't get it right quickly enough. We should all thank Warrick for telling a hard truth the government will not want to hear: how US policies helped give birth to the so-called Islamic State."

—Dana Priest, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter and author of Top Secret America

"Joby Warrick's Black Flags is invaluable for anyone struggling to understand the gruesome excesses and inexplicable appeal of ISIS ... [a] seminal book."

-- Los Angeles Times