This book is so interesting, especially because I love books about war (or kind of like war) ( )

Geffen Publishing House has released a detailed account of the war on ISIS. Most of us have etched in our memories the fairly recent daily headlines that were provided by this a few years ago the terrorist group. Thanks to the constant horrors of this organization having been squashed by coalition forces, the casual news observer is no longer likely to hear much of this organization with the longer name of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The book title is After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East. It's by Jerusalem Post reporter Seth J. Frantzman. His on-the-ground journalistic work spanned four years in areas where ISIS conducted its reign of terror. The task could not have been easy. Frantzman observes that journalists who cover war suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. That may or may not indicate that he may have had some first-hand PTSD experience. He doesn't indicate either way. The author's decision to cover the war on ISIS in Iraq came despite reservations on the part of his wife. One can only imagine the concerns she had as he was covering warfare.

I noted some of Frantzman's revelations that I thought worth remembering:

The war on ISIS happened on a First World War battlefield where fighting sometimes was conducted with the use of 21st century technology. The al Qaeda terrorist group was like grade school compared to the graduate school of ISIS. A Russian man observed that one problem was that fighters for ISIS wanted to die while Kurds wanted to live. ISIS executed old people by lining them up and shooting them in the back of the head. Many women and girls were captured by ISIS and subsequently forced into sex slavery in Syria.

War is certainly not pretty, and the uniqueness of this war had its own brand of ugliness. The author surely must have breathed a sigh of relief when his on-the-ground reporting finally ended. It surely takes a special kind of fourth estate member to do this kind of reporting. But it's a crucial job, and I am glad that this man provided his unique insight into the war against ISIS.

I actually enjoyed the author's writing a great deal and found his descriptions of events eye-opening. It brought such clarity to the actual reality of the tensions between so many people, things that were not explained fully in the media here. The only tricky part for me was the use of (as necessary) so many place and people names that I was unfamiliar with.....I struggled to keep up with some of the storyline as a result. Regardless, an in-your-face look at a devastating period of time. ( )

Frantzman, a journalist based in Jerusalem, weaves together a good story that could easily be overly complicated. The warring factions in Syria, Iraq, and less frequently in neighboring countries. play a political game of rotating allies and targets according to end goals. It is, essentially, an end-justifies-the-means approach, yet the cards dealt to each faction create a reactive rather than proactive approach. Frantzman details the complicated relationships between 21st Century Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, Turkey, the US, Europe, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and much of MENA, overall.

I was initially concerned with the book's challenge of forecasting the future of this region after ISIS, which would be similar to trying to foresee ISIS after surges of the Taliban and al Quaeda with Huntington's Clash of Civilizations as the backdrop. Yet Frantzman, like any thorough journalist, takes the reader through the battles with ISIS and gives a first-hand perspective on who was fighting and why they were risking and taking lives. The MENA region provides such a hotbed of warring factions primarily because the actors each have a different end game, particularly based on their worldview. For instance, ISIS fighters used destruction to eradicate culture and history while Iran seeks to gain a stronger hold over the region through blurring its border via obtaining neighborly political allegiance to Tehran. Since this book was written, General Soleimani of Iran was killed in a US drone strike, and thus the story continues.

While the book's title is slightly misleading, as only the final two chapters, 26 and 27, delve into life after ISIS, Frantzman educates the reader throughout the book so that he or she can make calculated and informed forecasts. Yet it remains clear that Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan will remain unstable while the area grieves, keeps watch over enemies, determines current and stable allies, seeks political influence and economic assistance, and simply rebuilds infrastructure. The clash of civilizations is a simmering stew that will boil over frequently, and there's no sign of cooling.

This book should be on the list of Middle East policy experts and the lay reader. I was particularly moved by the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Yazidis, as well as Rojava's YPJ female fighters. The book could have been triple the size and scope and would still barely touch on the interplay of war, politics, and survival in the region. You should know about this struggle. ( )

Seth Franzman's book "After Isis - America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" has much information and many observations about the unrest that continually permeates the Middle East. It is just a shame that he has made it so hard for the reader to get to that information and those oberservations. First of all, the book screams for maps. Franzman in his narrative hopscotches from one obsure region to another, from one country to another, offers numerous interesting descriptions about locations (mountains on one side, an open plain on the other side), but the reader is left to wonder "Where am I?". The book generally covers the period from approximately 2014 to 2019, but it is not unusual for the reader to be swept back and forth from anecdote to anectdote and from year to year and back again on the same page. Again, the reader has to ask, "Where am I?", only now related to time. The author's writing style is at times difficult to follow. Many of his paragraphs are non-sequiturs - they take the thought no further and the next paragraph takes off in a totally different direction. In addition, a glossary of terms would be helpful, especially in identifying and defining the multitude of warring parties and political factions involved in the conflict, since they are referred to over and over again only by a series of letters in the alphabet. There are indeed some powerful anecdotes concerning his work as a journalist in the Middle East. There are some stirring descriptions about the people and their suffering due to the perpetual wars that rage among the Muslim factions. But the connective tissue that would make this a much more interesting and enlightening read falls far short of good standards of writing. ( )