With the impartiality of a competent researcher and the extraordinary skill of a storyteller, American journalist Joby Warrick unfolds before us a bright and terrible canvas - the recent history of the Middle East. Inevitably, at the center of this documentary story is the paradoxical figure of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist who overshadowed Osama bin Laden with his notoriety and laid the foundation for the most inhumane organization of our time - the Islamic State (the organization is banned in the Russian Federation). Against a backdrop of changing scenery - the plans and miscalculations of politicians in different countries, the wars in Iraq and Syria, the efforts of American and Jordanian intelligence services - Warrick traces the ways and methods of international terrorism, which still threatens the world.