Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect

Few of us were able to keep up with the innumerable developments and atrocities that began with the Arab Spring in 2011. Award-winning journalist Reese Erlich, who witnessed the unfolding events, has written this extensive volume, Inside Syria, that starts hundreds of years before the current rebellion. The plot is extremely complex and involved, with a great number of groups in conflict. Erlich gives us a summary of the dozens of groups in his first appendix—several for, and just as many against, Assad, the Kurds, and as many as seven religious organizations, mostly all in conflict. This seems like an impossible issue. Erlich starts back in the tenth century, and chapter by chapter we learn about the chaotic situation.

The book is exceedingly detailed, and only those with serious interest will read this volume cover to cover. The writing is excellent, full of war, history, and economics, but mostly of ethnic/religious conflicts. Besides a few pages of inbound photos, illustrations are sadly missing. Having so much detail, a chapter summary would be welcome to those readers whose time and interests are limited. Subscripts in the text refer to a twenty-seven-page reference section. The book concludes with an eleven-page meticulous timeline segment.