Counter Jihad: America's Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria: by Brian Glyn Williams, Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017, 400 pp., $26.50 (paper), ISBN 9780812224207.

On the whole, the book can be a useful guide in making sense of the complexities caused by the direct outcome of U.S. troops' deployment in Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq and Syria. Williams correctly points out that the U.S. was primarily concerned with Iraq, rather than focusing on Afghanistan, a country that was truly known to pose a legitimate terrorist threat. A Professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams provides an overarching narrative of events leading to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). [Extracted from the article]