Structure

This work is primarily set in chronological order, but with numerous flashbacks. First, while events proceed more or less directly from the late 1990s until the solidification of the Islamic State and its territorial gains, the story employs numerous flashback and background. Zarqawi is introduced in prison in the 1990s in Part I, yet it is the next section, during his interrogation by Abu Haytham, that we learn of the plot that landed him in prison to begin with (through a telling of Abu Haytham's background, as part of the team that arrested Zarqawi in 1994). As new individuals are introduced, the book tells us of their background, often going several years or even decades, and occasionally taking readers back to events the book has already covered, such as the invasion of Iraq, as told from a new character's perspective.

The other caveat is the prologue, which takes...