Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump

America snatches victory from the jaws of bloody quagmire in this gripping history of the battle with ISIS. Wall Street Journal correspondent Gordon (The End Game) recaps Operation Inherent Resolve, the yearslong U.S. campaign to defeat the Islamic State after it conquered much of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and proclaimed a medieval-minded caliphate complete with sex slavery and beheadings. He paints it as a long, twilight struggle as the U.S. assembled a fractious coalition comprising the inept Iraqi military, Shiite and Sunni militias, and squabbling Kurdish forces, all while negotiating Iraq’s poisonous factional politics and the meddling of Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. The U.S. government’s internal divisions were equally sharp as the Obama administration gingerly avoided heavy troop commitments while deploying extensive technology and airpower to ensure victory. Gordon, who embedded with anti-ISIS forces, elucidates both backroom policy wrangles and frontline firefights; his riveting recreation of the 2016–2017 battle to retake Mosul is an epic of desperate combat that culminates with female suicide bombers detonating themselves at security checkpoints crowded with fleeing civilians. This is the definitive record of a critical chapter in the fight against extremism. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (June)