They Will Have to Die Now

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2019Its a small miracle that a writer as good as James Verini witnessed the battle of Mosul. It will take its place among the very best war writing of the past two decades. George PackerJames 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. This urgent, scalding, hallucinatory work of war reportage (Patrick Radden Keefe) takes the reader into the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time.