Ivor Prickett End Of The Caliphate

This book is the result of over a year's work in 2016 and 2017 photographing the military campaign to reclaim Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, from ISIS. Working exclusively for the New York Times, Irish-born photographer Ivor Prickett (born 1983) was often embedded within Iraqi special forces troops as he documented both the fighting and its toll on the civilian population and urban landscape. The operation lasted nearly nine months, resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and ruined vast tracts of the city. Involving some of the most brutal urban combat since World War II, the fall of Mosul was key to the downfall of the Islamic State: soon after, the remains of the so-called "Caliphate" quickly collapsed. Prickett focuses on the human struggles of conflict. Taken on the frontline, his pictures legitimately and compellingly record the experience of being "caught in the crossfire," whether as a soldier or noncombatant. He furthermore captures postwar reality while attempting to reconstruct the final weeks of combat: the devastated city, including abandoned corpses of ISIS fighters, and, months later, families searching for missing loved ones and civilians returning to reclaim their homes and lives.

The Islamic State, known as ISIS, exploded into the public eye in 2014 with startling speed and shocking brutality. It has captured the imagination of the global jihadist movement, attracting recruits in unprecedented numbers and wreaking bloody destruction with a sadistic glee that has alienated even the hardcore terrorists of its parent organization, al Qaeda. Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, two of America’s leading experts on terrorism, dissect the new model for violent extremism that ISIS has leveraged into an empire of death in Iraq and Syria, and an international network that is rapidly expanding in the Middle East, North Africa and around the world. ISIS: The State of Terror traces the ideological innovations that the group deploys to recruit unprecedented numbers of Westerners, the composition of its infamous snuff videos, and the technological tools it exploits on social media to broadcast its atrocities, and its recruiting pitch to the world, including its success at attracting thousands of Western adherents. The authors examine ISIS’s predatory abuse of women and children and its use of horror to manipulate world leaders and its own adherents as it builds its twisted society. The authors offer a much-needed perspective on how world leaders should prioritize and respond to ISIS’s deliberate and insidious provocations.

"They Will Have to Die Now is the story of what happened after most Americans stopped paying attention to Iraq…It will take its place among the very best war writing of the past two decades." —George Packer, author of Our Man and The Assassins’ Gate James Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis’ last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year, nor that it would become, in the words of the Pentagon, "the most significant urban combat since WWII." They Will Have to Die Now takes the reader into the heart of the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time. We see unspeakable violence, improbable humanity, and occasional humor. We meet an Iraqi major fighting his way through the city with a bad leg; a general who taunts snipers; an American sergeant who removes his glass eye to unnerve his troops; a pair of Moslawi brothers who welcomed the Islamic State, believing, as so many Moslawis did, that it might improve their shattered lives. Verini also relates the rich history of Iraq, and of Mosul, one of the most beguiling cities in the Middle East.

In 'Another Way of Looking at Love', the landscape is explored as a metaphor to consider the personal, societal, and environmental consequences of disconnection, and simultaneously, our yearning to be connected. From 2015-2018, Janelle Lynch (born 1969) has used an 8 x 10 camera to create still lives in the landscape that combine similar and disparate visual and biological elements. This process begins by identifying details in nature that, based on a unique vantage point, created geometric formations of closure. The connective point, or nucleus, that is created by the union becomes the artist?s plane of focus. The work is informed by Lynch?s recent immersion in drawing and painting from perception, primarily by charcoal mark-making?a new aspect of her practice that has allowed for a deeper inquiry into the nature of seeing, such as: formal abstraction, color relativity, and the notion of relationality.

Testament is a collection of photographs and writing by late photojournalist Chris Hondros spanning over a decade of coverage from most of the world's conflicts since the late 1990s, including Kosovo, Afghanistan, the West Bank, Iraq, Liberia, Egypt, and Libya. Through Hondros' images, we witness a jubilant Liberian rebel fighter exalt during a firefight, a U.S. Marine remove Saddam Hussein's portrait from an Iraqi classroom, American troops ride confidently in a thin-skinned unarmored Humvee during the first months of the Iraq war, "the probing eyes of an Afghan village boy," and "rambunctious Iraqi schoolgirls enjoying their precious few years of relative freedom before aging into more restricted adulthoods." Hondros was not just a front-line war photographer, but also a committed observer and witness, and his work humanizes complex world events and brings to light shared human experiences. Evident in his writings, interspersed throughout, Hondros was determined to broaden our understanding of war and its consequences. This unyielding determination led Hondros to take dozens of trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, even as the news turned elsewhere. During these "routine" trips, Hondros examined and observed daily life in these war-torn societies. His inventive Humvee picture series frames the ever-changing landscapes of these countries, offering a glimpse into the daily lives of those most affected by conflict. "One of the ongoing themes in my work, I hope, and one of the things I believe in, is a sense of human nature, a sense of shared humanity above the cultural layers we place on ourselves [which don't] mean that much compared to the human experience." —Chris Hondros As a photographer working in the world's most difficult and dangerous places, Chris Hondros had the distinctive ability to connect his viewers with people embroiled in far-flung and sometimes obscure conflicts. He recognized the shared humanity among those affected by war, regardless of culture or beliefs, and he was determined to share their challenges to the wider world in the hope of provoking thought, raising awareness, and fostering understanding. In the introduction to the book, Getty Images Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein writes, "Chris believed that his work could and would make a difference. He dedicated and ultimately lost his life in pursuit of that belief. I have no doubt that Chris was correct. Images can and do influence public opinion, galvanize people and societies, and force governments to change. They bring much-needed focus and attention to the suffering of people who are otherwise unable to communicate their plight." Inspired by his life, work, and vision—The Chris Hondros Fund endeavors to bring light to shared human experiences by supporting and protecting photojournalists. Through their generous support, Getty Images' proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the Fund. For more information please visit www.chrishondrosfund.org.

An authoritative introduction to ISIS—now expanded and revised to bring events up to the present The Islamic State stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. However, its most striking and distinctive characteristic was its capacity to build governing institutions and a theologically grounded national identity. What explains the rise of ISIS and the caliphate, and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? In this book, one of the world’s leading authorities on political Islam and jihadism sheds new light on these questions. Moving beyond journalistic accounts, Fawaz Gerges provides a clear and compelling explanation of the deeper conditions that fuel ISIS. This new edition brings the story of ISIS to the present, covering key events—from the military defeat of its territorial state to the death of its leader al-Baghdadi—and analyzing how the ongoing Syrian, Iraqi, and Saudi-Iranian conflict could lead to ISIS’s revival.

"A majestic book." --Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score A unique joint memoir by a U.S. Marine and a conflict photographer whose unlikely friendship helped both heal their war-wounded bodies and souls "The dueling-piano spirit of SHOOTING GHOSTS works because its authors are so committed to transparency, admitting readers into the dark crevices of their isolation." Wall St Journal War tears people apart, but it can also bring them together. Through the unpredictability of war and its aftermath, a decorated Marine sergeant and a world-trotting war photographer became friends, their bond forged as they patrolled together through the dusty alleyways of Helmand province and camped side by side in the desert. It deepened after Sergeant T. J. Brennan was injured during a Taliban ambush, and both returned home. Brennan began to suffer from the effects of his injury and from the fallout of his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But war correspondents experience similar rates of posttraumatic stress as combat veterans. The causes can be different, but guilt plays a prominent role in both. For Brennan, it’s the things he’s done, or didn’t do, that haunt him. Finbarr O’Reilly’s conscience is nagged by the task of photographing people at their most vulnerable while being able to do little to help, and his survival guilt as colleagues die on the job. Their friendship offered them both a shot at redemption. As we enter the fifteenth year of continuous war, it is increasingly urgent not just to document the experiences of the battlefield but also to probe the reverberations that last long after combatants and civilians have returned home, and to understand the many faces trauma takes. Shooting Ghosts looks at the horrors of war directly, but then turns to a journey that draws on our growing understanding of what recovery takes. Their story, told in alternating first-person narratives, is about the things they saw and did, the ways they have been affected, and how they have navigated the psychological aftershocks of war and wrestled with reforming their own identities and moral centers. While war never really ends for those who’ve lived through it, this book charts the ways two survivors have found to calm the ghosts and reclaim a measure of peace.