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This is a story unlike any previously published. The product of some 18 months of reporting, it tells the story of the catastrophe that fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis.

The geography of this catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but its consequences — war and uncertainty throughout the world — are familiar to us all.  The story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Accompanying the text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the 2016 battle to retake Falluja.

It is unprecedented to focus so much energy and attention on a single story,  but what follows is one of the most clear-eyed, powerful and human explanations of what went wrong in the region that you will ever read.