In this successor to his bestselling The Rise of Islamic State, which was translated into 16 languages, and the widely-acclaimed The Age of Jihad, prize-winning foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn provides a clear-sighted and closely-observed account of the Middle East wars conducted by Donald Trump during the first term of his presidency.

From interviews via a weak cellphone link with soon-to-be killed Iraqis in Isis-besieged Mosul, to the gunshots heard in his Iraqi hotel room, not far from a Tahrir Square where protests were swelling into a brutally-repressed national uprising; from the destruction of Raqqa, Afrin, and Eastern Ghouta, to Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Kurds in north-east Syria, Cockburn opens a vivid window onto the end of the Isis Caliphate, the successive defeats of the Kurds, and America’s escalating confrontation with Iran, culminating in the world-shaking assassination of General Qasem Soleimani.

Donald Trump claimed that his would be a presidency that brought to an end American engagement in “messy” foreign wars. In this vital and necessary book, Patrick Cockburn exposes how his on/off adventurism has not only continued widespread intervention, but added a dangerous layer of chaos and unpredictability.


“The greatest living foreign correspondent in English, a writer of understated integrity and compassion, with the necessary balance of indignation and detachment” —Richard Lloyd Parry, New York Times