It's been puzzling to me forr a while as to how ISIS appeals to recruits from around the world. How does their brutality, beheadings of foreign nationals, executions of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, fellow Muslims, and the horrific burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot, etc., translate into something Western muslims, men and women, want to be a part of? How can that be justified to anyone, much less be appealing to others? I couldn't rationalize it at all, try as I might.

I've tried reading other books about ISIS, Al Qaeda, radical jihadists, militant Islam, etc., including Joby Warrick's "Black Flags"; Geert Wilders "Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me"; Ali Soufan's "The Black Banners"; Glen Beck's "It IS About Islam"; Mark Steyn's "America Alone"; Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Heretic"; Yaroslav Trofimov's "The Seige of Mecca"; Kenneth Timmerman's "Preachers of Hate"; Bernard Lewis' "The Crisis of Islam"; Brigitte Gabriel's "They Must be Stopped"; Kirk Lippold's "Front Burner"; George Friedman's "America's Secret War"; etc., and they all provided insights, but none truly helped me understand the draw of ISIS to outsiders.

While I expect I'll never fully have my questions answered, this book about ISIS by Jessica Stern and J. M. Berger probably provides the best explanation of how and why ISIS is able to draw people to its ranks. I won't try to paraphrase the author's explanations, because it's complex, broad, and I couldn't do it justice. Other books describe how ISIS was formed, and talk about the significant leaders of ISIS, but this book, while being somewhat dry in parts, still provides the best explanation of how it's able to draw recruits and to expand its influence in Syria, Iraq, and now in other regions as well.
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I found this book very interesting. I was seeking knowledge about ISIS, which this work provided. My one issue was that of course the names of the people involved with the organizations are Arabic, and the organizations are Arabic....so all the names are Arabic which made many of the relationships and changing relationships difficult to follow.
Other than that, I thought it was a fine read overall. ( )

This book is full of facts and names and ought to be fascinating, but I kept reading a chapter and not taking in any of it. It's uninteresting and it shouldn't be. So I gave up early on. ( )

This book will not keep you on the edge of your seat, if that is what you are seeking from the book. At times, the book kept me interested while at other times, it was drawn out and boring. It did accomplish my number one objective in reading the book - it gave me some insight on the genesis of ISIS and how it ties to the Islam religion and Muslims, in general. I was amazed reading about how ISIS is exploiting social media to get their ideas to a broader audience. The world has become one scary place!!!.

I cannot say I am any more of an expert on ISIS than I was before reading the book, but it was a fair read. One and half thumbs up. ( )