How big is the threat posed by American ISIS supporters? How many Americans have joined ISIS and how many want to return to the United States? Compared to participation by Americans in other jihadist groups, the scale of American involvement in jihadist activity today is unprecedented. This book, from one of the leading counter-terror centres, draws on first-hand interviews with former American Islamic State members and law enforcement officials who tracked them, and includes detailed analysis of the court cases against them and their social media presence. Homegrown reveals how and why ISIS was able to radicalize and recruit a new generation of jihadist sympathizers in America.

The war against ISIS is often explained through the group's own rise to power. The American side of the story has not yet been told. This book records how the United States and its allies chose to fight the group, what the consequences have been for transatlantic relations, and how these factors may shape future wars the West decides to pursue. The book is based on first-person interviews with U.S. and European policymakers, and members of the military in direct combat against ISIS - from U.S and allied forces on the ground to the Kurdish fighters who fought beside them. These interviews show precisely how the West fights wars through the eyes of the people most involved in them and includes key insights about civilian decision-making as it happened. In tracing the war as it developed, the book examines the West's approach to conflict and reveals new insights such as why both the U.S. military and the civilian bureaucracy underestimated Russian military capabilities. The war was always meant to be small and focused, but its repercussions have been considerable and far-reaching, including a serious rupture in Turkish-Western relations and Russia's return to the Middle East. Aaron Stein shows why mistakes were made in the war against ISIS and what happens when a narrow policy focus on counter terrorism is pursued at the expense of almost all wider regional security and political concerns. At a time when the U.S might be called again to stem the rise of a terror group or to fight against a collective threat, the lessons in this book are essential.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • In a thrilling dramatic narrative, the award-winning reporter traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents. With a new Afterword Drawing on unique high-level access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today’s most dangerous extremist threat.

On the fiftieth anniversary of her death, a startling new vision of Plath—the first to draw from the recently-opened Ted Hughes archive The life and work of Sylvia Plath has taken on the proportions of myth. Educated at Smith, she had an epically conflict-filled relationship with her mother, Aurelia. She then married the poet Ted Hughes and plunged into the sturm and drang of married life in the full glare of the world of English and American letters. Her poems were fought over, rejected, accepted and, ultimately, embraced by readers everywhere. Dead at thirty, she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven while her children slept. Her poetry collection titled Ariel became a modern classic. Her novel The Bell Jar has a fixed place on student reading lists. American Isis will be the first Plath bio benefitting from the new Ted Hughes archive at the British Library which includes forty one letters between Plath and Hughes as well as a host of unpublished papers. The Sylvia Plath Carl Rollyson brings to us in American Isis is no shrinking Violet overshadowed by Ted Hughes, she is a modern day Isis, a powerful force that embraced high and low culture to establish herself in the literary firmament.

The twentieth century was one of astonishing change in science, especially as pursued in the United States. Against a backdrop of dramatic political and economic shifts brought by world wars, intermittent depressions, sporadic and occasionally massive increases in funding, and expanding private patronage, this scientific work fundamentally reshaped everyday life. Science and the American Century offers some of the most significant contributions to the study of the history of science, technology, and medicine during the twentieth century, all drawn from the pages of the journal Isis. Fourteen essays from leading scholars are grouped into three sections, each presented in roughly chronological order. The first section charts several ways in which our knowledge of nature was cultivated, revealing how scientific practitioners and the public alike grappled with definitions of the “natural” as they absorbed and refracted global information. The essays in the second section investigate the changing attitudes and fortunes of scientists during and after World War II. The final section documents the intricate ways that science, as it advanced, became intertwined with social policies and the law. This important and useful book provides a thoughtful and detailed overview for scholars and students of American history and the history of science, as well as for scientists and others who want to better understand modern science and science in America.

Looking to the future in confronting the Islamic State The Islamic State (best known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) has been active for less than a decade, but it has already been the subject of numerous histories and academic studies—all focus primarily on the past. The Future of ISIS is the first major study to look ahead: what are the prospects for the Islamic State in the near term, and what can the global community, including the United States, do to counter it? Edited by two distinguished scholars at Indiana University, the book examines how ISIS will affect not only the Middle East but the global order. Specific chapters deal with such questions as whether and how ISIS benefitted from intelligence failures, and what can be done to correct any such failures; how to confront the alarmingly broad appeal of Islamic State ideology; the role of local and regional actors in confronting ISIS; and determining U.S. interests in preventing ISIS from gaining influence and controlling territory. Given the urgency of the topic, The Future of ISIS is of interest to policymakers, analysts, and students of international affairs and public policy.

The war against ISIS is often explained through the group's own rise to power. The American side of the story has not yet been told. This book records how the United States and its allies chose to fight the group, what the consequences have been for transatlantic relations, and how these factors may shape future wars the West decides to pursue. The book is based on first-person interviews with U.S. and European policymakers, and members of the military in direct combat against ISIS - from U.S and allied forces on the ground to the Kurdish fighters who fought beside them. These interviews show precisely how the West fights wars through the eyes of the people most involved in them and includes key insights about civilian decision-making as it happened. In tracing the war as it developed, the book examines the West's approach to conflict and reveals new insights such as why both the U.S. military and the civilian bureaucracy underestimated Russian military capabilities. The war was always meant to be small and focused, but its repercussions have been considerable and far-reaching, including a serious rupture in Turkish-Western relations and Russia's return to the Middle East. Aaron Stein shows why mistakes were made in the war against ISIS and what happens when a narrow policy focus on counter terrorism is pursued at the expense of almost all wider regional security and political concerns. At a time when the U.S might be called again to stem the rise of a terror group or to fight against a collective threat, the lessons in this book are essential.