"Patrick Cockburn spotted the emergence of ISIS much earlier than anybody else and wrote about it with a depth of understanding that was just in a league of its own. Nobody else was writing that stuff at that time, and the judges wondered whether the Government should consider pensioning off the whole of MI6 and hiring Patrick Cockburn instead. The breadth of his knowledge and his ability make connections is phenomenal." --Judges of the Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year Award 2014 "Quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in the Middle East today." --Seymour M. Hersh "One of the best informed on-the-ground journalists. He was almost always correct on Iraq." --Sidney Blumenthal, in an email to Hillary Clinton "A fine and courageous journalist, who has displayed a sustained commitment to laying bare the tribulations of the Middle East.

This book confirms Cockburn's reputation as a reporter and analyst." --Max Hastings, Sunday Times "A compelling series of dispatches from a journalist who has learned the hard golden rule in Iraq: 'to forecast the worst possible outcome.'" -- Kirkus "It is a brilliant tour d'horizon of the new wars, a chronicle compiled from despatches, notes and diaries. No one could be better placed for this task and no one else could have produced such a lucid and comprehensive account." --Robert Fox, Evening Standard "Likely to be a reference for future scholars. Cockburn's dispatches make for a somber, vivid, and gripping work of eyewitness history." -- Publishers Weekly "His reports coalesce here, giving life and shape to the forces of terror currently shaping the region and beyond. The book serves as a strong argument for sharpening the mind of each and every politician responsible for the continuing calamity.

" -- GQ "A meticulous and blistering condemnation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East." -- Macleans "This book is required reading for anyone who wants to try to understand the disaster. It should be compulsory reading for politicians, diplomats, defence chiefs and the academic think-tanks whose members make confident predictions, usually confounded by what follows." --Allan Massie, Scotsman.