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The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State Hardcover – December 20, 2016

by Graeme Wood (Author)

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What does ISIS really want? This is the definitive account of the strategy, psychology, and fundamentalism driving the Islamic State.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS • “Worthy of Joseph Conrad . . . gripping, sobering and revelatory.”—Tom Holland, New Statesman

The Islamic State inspired a wave of true believers to travel to Syria from Europe, America, and the Middle East, in numbers not seen since the Crusades. What compelled tens of thousands of men and women to leave comfortable, privileged lives to join a death cult in the desert? Steven Pinker called Graeme Wood’s analysis of this phenomenon in The Atlantic “fascinating, terrifying, occasionally blackly humorous.” In The Way of the Strangers, Wood uses character study, analysis, and original reporting to take us further into the Islamic State’s apocalyptic vision.

Though the Islamic State has lost territory, it threatens to rise again, and its followers are plotting on every continent. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood meets with supporters, recruiters, and scholars and asks them why they believe that killing and dying for this cause is the only path to Paradise. With a new afterword, The Way of the Strangers uncovers the theology and emotional appeal of this resilient group and explores its idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam. Just as Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower explained the rise of Al Qaida, this book will shape our understanding of a new and deadlier generation of terrorists.

Praise for The Way of the Strangers

“The Way of the Strangers represents journalism at its best: vivid writing, indefatigable legwork, and fearless analysis.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World

“Wood is a brilliant analyst and storyteller, and his firsthand reporting and language abilities make him the most reliable commentator on the Islamic State that I have read. His wit matches his intelligence (’Well-behaved Salafis seldom make history’)—you don't get through any two pages in his book without a good laugh.”—Peter Theroux, author of Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia

“Excruciatingly well observed and devastatingly honest . . . This is the first and only book about the Islamic State to expose, explain, and ultimately undermine its ideology with the relentless irony that comes from blending deep knowledge with hands-on experience. Wood makes it impossible not to laugh, despite the horrors.”—Elisabeth Kendall, senior research fellow in Arabic and Islamic studies, University of Oxford

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

December 20, 2016
Dimensions

6.4 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0812988752
ISBN-13

978-0812988758
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Readers are taken on a global journey to meet the frothing fans of ISIS. . . . [Graeme] Wood wants to know these people, to get in their skin, to understand how they see the world. Unlike most journalists writing about Islam today, there is no partisan axe to grind here, no hidden agenda to subtly advance. . . . To these troubled men, Islam is not an opiate of the masses; it is a euphoric, reality-bending, and ultimately self-annihilating psychedelic.”—New Republic

“Masterful.”—The New York Review of Books

“[Graeme Wood] shows, convincingly, that the stifling and abhorrent practices of the Islamic State are rooted in Islam itself—not mainstream Islam, but in scriptures and practices that have persisted for centuries. . . . The Islamic State, such as it is, is a dangerous place, and Wood’s book amounts to a tour around its far edges.”—Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“Worthy of Joseph Conrad . . . In a field where there has admittedly been little competition, [Wood’s] book ranks as the funniest yet written on Islamic State. As in many a British sitcom, the comedy mostly emerges from the disequilibrium between the scale of his characters’ pretensions and ambitions and the banality of their day-to-day lives. . . . Gripping, sobering and revelatory.”—New Statesman (UK)

“The best way to defeat the Islamic State is to understand it. And to do that, the best place to start is [The Way of the Strangers]. . . . A series of gripping, fascinating portraits. . . . Wood has the talented journalist’s skill for interview and observation. He’s an astute psychologist and a good writer to boot. . . . It’s a great read. But more importantly, Wood’s book reveals truths about ISIS that are hiding in plain sight—but that our leaders make themselves willfully ignorant of. They ought to read his book, too.”—The Week

“Indispensable and gripping . . . From Mosul to Melbourne, from Cairo to Tokyo, from London to Oslo, from Connecticut to California, Graeme Wood’s quest to understand the Islamic State is a round-the-world journey to the end of the night. As individuals, the men he encounters are misfits, even losers. But their millenarian Islamist ideology makes them the most dangerous people on the planet.”—Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, author of The War of the World

“Over the course of its short life, the Islamic State has inspired millions, thousands of whom have rallied to its cause in search of a glorious death. But why? Are its devotees nothing more than sadists and two-bit mafiosi for whom religion is a fig leaf and who will fade away in the face of military defeat? In this essential book, Graeme Wood draws on more than a decade of reporting to demolish these and other comforting deceptions. The Islamic State’s devotees are true believers indeed, and their nightmarish vision will haunt our world for decades to come, regardless of what happens on the battlefield.”—Reihan Salam, executive editor, National Review

“Graeme Wood is America’s foremost interpreter of ISIS as a world-historical phenomenon. In The Way of the Strangers, he has given us the definitive work to date on the origins, plans, and meaning of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization. Wood is a fearless, relentlessly curious, and magnetically interesting writer who takes us on an intellectual and theological journey to the darkest places on the planet, yet he manages to do this without despairing for our collective future. This book is a triumph of journalism.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief, The Atlantic

“With coolheaded sensitivity, Graeme Wood pulls together history, religion, and shoe-leather reporting to illuminate what will continue to be one the biggest geopolitical challenges of our time, the rise of the Islamic State.”—Admiral James Stavridis, USN, supreme allied commander at NATO; dean emeritus, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; operating executive, the Carlyle Group; chair of the board of counselors, McLarty Associates

“The Obama administration insisted that ISIS had nothing to do with Islam, and Trump and his advisers say that Islam hates us. There had to be something between these two erroneous extremes, and that something is the scholarship in Graeme Wood’s The Way of the Strangers. It is a balanced account of how terrorists, while in no way representing all of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, take strength from some authentic Islamic narratives. ISIS is down but not yet out. It’s time we understood them.”—Michael Hayden, former CIA director

About the Author

Graeme Wood is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has written for The New Republic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, The American Scholar, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many other publications. He was the 2014–2015 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he teaches in the political science department at Yale University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Chosen Sect

Man at last will begin to harmonize himself in earnest. He will make it his business to achieve beauty by giving the movement of his own limbs the utmost precision, purposefulness and economy in his work, his walk and his play. He will try to master first the semiconscious and then the subconscious processes in his own organism, such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, [and] reproduction. . . . The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation.

—Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924)

The Islamic State’s war for the end of the world began for me the same way it has for many others: with a lesson in etiquette.

In October 2011, two and a half years before the declaration of the caliphate of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, I came to Cairo, the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world. That Cairo is also the most ill-mannered city in the Arab world is not in doubt; whether one loves it or reviles it for its discourtesy is a matter of taste. Short-term visitors are cheated by cab drivers or browbeaten by tourist guides, and they board their flights home denouncing Cairo as a city of rogues. But Cairo’s disobedience often breeds cleverness—artistic, social, literary—of a productive and admirable sort. Nine months before, it had made Cairo a crucible of political renewal, when the Tahrir Square revolution ousted Hosni Mubarak and put in his place a provisional government led by the Muslim Brotherhood, and therefore far friendlier to religious politics. Now the country faced an uncertain fate, and all factions were plotting, with varying competence, to press their advantages.

At twilight, after the sun is down and before the shop lights and street lamps switch on, Cairo becomes a city lit by headlights, and the dust and grit from the day’s traffic hang visibly in the air. One such evening, at a political rally near Tahrir Square, I met Hesham Elashry, then in his early fifties, and accepted his invitation to a meal and a stroll. Hesham was a politically engaged Muslim. At the time, there was not yet an Islamic State to support, but he associated with other people and groups with clear jihadist leanings. He did not conceal his motive in talking to me: he wanted me to become a Muslim.

We were downtown, in an area near several government ministries and offices. Traffic interrupted our dialogue now and then. But occasionally we’d pass close to a sensitive building, and security checkpoints would stop most cars from entering, so that we’d have a few minutes of pedestrian peace. Hesham filled the silences. His instruction began with bearing, poise, and dress. I had been hopping around to avoid tripping on chasms in the broken pavement. Hesham approved of my pace and noted that the Prophet Muhammad walked quickly as well. “The Prophet walked fast,” he said, “as if he was jogging.” He corrected me, politely, with literally every step. When the cars came back, they passed close, their slipstream tickling the hairs on my forearm and dusting us with carbon. “Walk this way,” he said, taking my left arm with his right arm and putting himself, chivalrously, between me and the traffic. “The Prophet said to touch other people with your right hand, to keep what is good on your right.” He explained the virtue of elegant footsteps, particularly for women; of hair kept short on certain parts of the face and body and allowed to grow jungly elsewhere; of gentle language, for both men and women, and abstention from guttersnipe dialects of Arabic in favor of the baroque and complex language of classical Arabic and the Koran.

I felt myself straightening my back and tongue under his tutelage. He could be kind and insulting in the same sentence. “With Islam, there is a way for everything,” he told me—a way to pick one’s teeth (with a miswak, a gingery-tasting stick), a way to dress (in loose trousers that stop mid-calf, exposing the ankles), a way to eat and drink. “Without Islam, you are like an animal,” just making decisions based on instinct, and ruled by base pleasures. (“Worse than an animal,” another jihadist later told me. “An animal has to obey Allah. It has no soul, no will. You can disobey. You can be worse.”) Hesham assured me that God would be patient. “If you become a Muslim tonight,” he said, “you will be a baby Muslim.” Just as a child learns to walk by pulling himself up, staggering and tumbling, I would be expected to falter and misstep at first. But he promised I would soon glide through the world with righteous aplomb. I would float three inches above the filth of the sidewalks and the decay of the mortal world—in it, but no longer of it.

The Sheikh Henry Higgins routine, offering an extreme makeover of my soul, had a political purpose as well as a personal one. When the Islamic State’s predecessors in Iraq began recruiting globally over the next few years, they stressed a theme of metamorphosis through Islam. And I recognized from my experience with Hesham, which did not end with that gritty stroll, that he had been recruiting me to join more than his religion. He was recruiting me to a polity that didn’t yet exist, an Islamic state that might resemble, ultimately, the Islamic State to come.

One of the illusions surrounding the Islamic State is that it arose from nowhere, that it drew itself into being on a blank slate. But it could never have achieved so much, so fast, if there had not been millions of people already hungry for what the Islamic State promised. And in Hesham’s proselytizing I detected a voracious appetite.

Both Hesham and the Islamic State adhere to a broad category of Islamic interpretation and practice known as Salafism. The term “Salafi” comes from the Arabic al salaf al salih [the pious forefathers], which refers to the first three generations of Muslims. Sunni Muslims all profess to adore these early Muslims and to take them, after the Prophet himself, as models of behavior. The reason for this veneration is a saying of the Prophet: “The best of my community are my generation, the ones who follow them, and the ones who follow them.” Salafis take the Koran, the example of the Prophet, and the actions and beliefs of these men and women as their primary sources of religious authority, and they reject the opinions of many Muslims who came later.

In reviving the ways of the Salaf, they tend to view the present world as a fallen one, and the majority of Muslims—who are not Salafi—as misguided for modifying or modernizing the faith from its perfect beginnings. Salafis reserve particular scorn for Sufis and Shia. Both Sufis and Shia, Salafis contend, are guilty of idolatry [shirk] for their innovative practices, particularly the veneration of saints and building shrines. Salafis’ first order of business is to expiate sin by ridding the world of these innovations. Some Salafis have been willing to use force to do so. Most household-name violent jihadists, including Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, have been jihadi-Salafis. Since the Prophet and his followers lived in a period of military conquest, their historical example offers modern jihadists ample precedent for violence.

But to model oneself after the Prophet and his followers is not necessarily to embrace violence, and to fight in the name of Islam is not to be Salafi. (In Chechnya and Libya, to name two recent venues, Sufis have wreaked havoc on infidel armies.) And most Salafis are political quietists who eschew political violence and concentrate on personal piety. Salafism, in a form evangelized by Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al Wahhab (1703–1792), is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, and that country’s political establishment views Salafism as a way to keep its population acquiescent to the existing order.

Well-behaved Salafis seldom make history, however, and neither Hesham nor Abu Bakr al Baghdadi has been among the more couth of their kind. They believe it is a virtue and an obligation to resist, violently, an infidel political order. The name of that resistance is jihad. Those who think the ideology of the Islamic State emerged Athena-like, suddenly and fully formed, from the head of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi would see their illusion dispelled by observing the transformation of Hesham, and the rise of jihadi Salafism as a whole.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; First Edition (December 20, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812988752
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812988758
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #323,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #62 in Iraq History (Books)
- #343 in Terrorism (Books)
- #484 in Middle Eastern Politics

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4.5 410 ratings

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Graeme Wood

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Graeme Wood is a National Correspondent at The Atlantic and teaches at Yale University.

He has written about Middle Eastern politics, terrorism, science, North Korea, opiate abuse in the United States and Eastern Europe, professional wrestling, and historical crime. He has reported for The Atlantic from every continent but Antarctica.

He studied at Deep Springs College, Harvard, and The American University in Cairo.

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Customers say

Customers find the book insightful, well-researched, and masterful. They describe it as an easy, interesting, and engaging read. Opinions differ on the writing style, with some finding it captivating and witty, while others say it takes determination to understand what the Islamic State stands for.

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24 customers mention "Insight"24 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and well-researched. They say it digs deeply into the belief structures of extremists. Readers also describe the book as interesting, compelling, and sobering.

"...He does a great job of tracing the IS ideology back to its sources, showing the fault lines that cause communion and clash amongst the extremist..." Read more

"...This book sheds some light on Islam and particularly the belief system of ISIS...." Read more

"Graeme Wood’s book is an incredibly well researched document with a very detailed account of the Islamic State through many and varied global..." Read more

"...It is far more accessible and provides a deeper understanding of the group than most other historically focused books in the genre, which generally..." Read more

18 customers mention "Readability"18 positive0 negative

Customers find the book very good, interesting, and engaging. They say it's one of the best non-fiction books they have ever read, worth the effort, and has an outstanding series of chapters that go into great detail. Readers also mention the author is fluent in Arabic and conversant in a fistful of other languages.

"...Wood is apparently fluent in Arabic and conversant in a fistful of other languages, as he goes to Cairo, Tokyo, Oslo, Mindanao (Philippines),..." Read more

"...this is a great read and provides a lot of insight between Islam the way I have seen it practiced and what The Islamic State practices...." Read more

"Wonderful and enjoyable read. I'm amazed at how many ISIS supporters Mr Wood was able to track down and interview...." Read more

"...Kind of heavy going for the layman but worth the effort." Read more

6 customers mention "Writing style"4 positive2 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing style. Some mention it's captivating, witty, and hilarious. Others say it's not an easy read and takes determination to understand what the Islamic State stands for.

"...There are also some hilarious bits which surprised me for the topic...." Read more

"...I will say that this is not an easy read, it is no novel, and takes determination to understand what the Islamic State stands for, and what it is..." Read more

"...history and explanation of the rise of ISIS, and his writing style is captivating. This is a book that I could not put down...." Read more

"Purchased it for the fiance. He says it is quite frightening, but very well written and looks forward to reading it a second time." Read more

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Dr Ali Binazir

Never underestimate your adversary: the primer on ISIS you didn't know you needed

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2016

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In poker, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to underestimate your adversary. The Islamic State (IS) is one adversary that both Westerners and Muslims have underestimated *and* misunderstood.

‘Cause let’s face it – who really gets IS anyway? Even to an educated audience, they seem like a jumble of names (ISIS? ISIL? Da’esh? different from Al Qaeda?), leaders, factions and philosophies falling somewhere between incoherence and chaos. How did they come about? Are these guys even Muslim? What’s up with the beheadings, amputations, and sex slavery? What compels so many seemingly nice young men to leave everything behind and join them in Syria? And why are they so damn mean? “The Way of the Strangers” places IS in an historical, religious, geographic and ideological context so by the end of it we can all say, “Aahh, *now* I get it.”

First of all, IS is definitely Muslim, even though most Muslim scholars and laymen hate to admit it. Wood shows how IS goes out of its way to justify its odious behavior with Muslim scripture. Its interpretations may be capricious and biased towards bloodthirsty nihilism, but they’re not coming out of thin air.

I particularly appreciated Wood’s taxonomy of the various interrelated Islamist movements. He does a great job of tracing the IS ideology back to its sources, showing the fault lines that cause communion and clash amongst the extremist factions. The descriptions are precise; never again will you conflate Wahhabis, Salafis and Dhahiris at a cocktail party.

Where the book really shines is in Wood’s encounters with flesh-and-blood IS devotees, many of them converts. Musa (born Robert) Cerantonio the Australian; Hesham Elashry, the Egyptian tailor; Hassan Ko Nakata, the mild-mannered Japanese academic; “The Avenger” (really); and the family of the gnomic Yahya Abu Hassan, who grew up a mere 20min away from Wood’s own childhood Dallas home.

Through these characters – mentally nimble but ideologically pigheaded, hospitable in manner but advocating brutish violence – you come to appreciate the internal logic of IS, and how a token bookish, socially awkward young man could get drawn into its certainties. You also apprehend the incredible darkness of it all.

Even as they try to invest IS with a patina of their own Utopian desires, Wood shows the underlying ambivalence and disappointment of the IS adherents he interviews. Unfortunately, “the tragedy is that even those inverted visionaries who live to realize their error will never be able to undo the misery the have inflicted on so many others.”

What’s most remarkable about the book is that it exists all. Wood is apparently fluent in Arabic and conversant in a fistful of other languages, as he goes to Cairo, Tokyo, Oslo, Mindanao (Philippines), Alexandria, London, Dallas and lord knows where else to meet these characters. He’s knowledgeable enough about Islamic history and scripture as to debate, gain the grudging respect and even *befriend* many of these people of odious creed. They pay for his meals and invite him in their homes without even poisoning him once. Maybe they all gave him a pass in hopes of the big prize for converting an atheist. Nevertheless, he probably ended up endangering his life several times to write this book.

Don’t know about you, but if some faction out there hated me and were hell-bent on annihilating me, my civilization and everything I value, I’d like to know more about them. Graeme Wood gives you an authoritative, level-headed peer into the abyss of IS to better understand the origins and intentions of this formidable enemy.

66 people found this helpful

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Arcane Thought

A must read for Americans

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2019

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Almost twenty years into out forever war and the majority of Americans couldn't tell you the difference between a Sunni and A Shiite let alone the vagaries of Islamic thought. This book sheds some light on Islam and particularly the belief system of ISIS.

Although probably not the intent I came away feeling sad for these people. They were losers and the forgotten looking for the meaning of life that got manipulated by some shady cats twisting up Islamic thought. As we can see when you add some charlatans and a lost generation you can get some horrific outcomes. I hope we as Christians are paying attention because this could happen to us again as well.

3 people found this helpful

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SimpleSolutions

An import resource to develop your understanding of the Islamic State

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2017

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Graeme Wood’s book is an incredibly well researched document with a very detailed account of the Islamic State through many and varied global interviews. His travels to get in depth detail on the Islamic State makes this a valuable resource for anyone attempting to get your head around a violent and somewhat confused self-righteous and radical organization (hardly a religion). The Islamic State does not see all Muslims as being automatically welcomed into their caliphate. It is evident that self-radicalized individuals globally are a serious threat. I find it somewhat amusing that Trump will “Establish new screening procedures and enforce our immigration laws to keep terrorists out of the United States”. What if they live in Austin, Texas? How can you tell one immigrant person with a compassionate and loving belief with another filled with anger and revenge for a supposed hostile (generally economic) situation? Or even attempting to survive in a country functioning under a despot. Many Islamic State radicals were not born Muslim, some even Catholic. Trumps plan to “Establish a Commission on Radical Islam to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of Radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization”. Suggestion: Read Wood’s book. I will say that this is not an easy read, it is no novel, and takes determination to understand what the Islamic State stands for, and what it is attempting to achieve before our end times.

7 people found this helpful

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Ab0473

Wood provides an exquisitely detailed account of the mindset, ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2017

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Wood provides an exquisitely detailed account of the mindset, goals, and theology of Salafi Jihadis and the specific contrasts between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The book is based off a series of vignettes detailing the author's first person encounters with a number of personalities amongst the Islamic State from Australian Salafi preachers to the family of Texan who now serves at the right hand of Baghdadi himself. This work provides an intimate grasp on the nature of the threat from the Islamic State and its ideology. It is far more accessible and provides a deeper understanding of the group than most other historically focused books in the genre, which generally chart the chronological evolution of ISIS from Zarqawi's Herat training camp in 1999 to Baghdadi's declaration of the Caliphate in 2014. These texts, while highly detailed, bog the reader down in an endless list of names, places, dates which can leave a reader bewildered and confused between Abu Hafs and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, al-Zarqawi and al-Zawhairi, etc. Wood, by contrast, focuses on only four to six main characters which get truly developed across the pages and the reader can really connect and get a sense for each person and their motivation. These are no longer just a collection of obscure foreign names but true characters with families, hopes, dreams, and sins. If there were any book to introduce the Islamic State to a Western audience and the imminent danger its totalitarian ideology poses, this is it.

10 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Christopher

Very compelling investigation into the ideolgy of ISIS

Reviewed in Canada on December 26, 2019

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A wonderful read. The author provides both an excellent collection of reporting projects along with an extremely compelling analysis of extremist ideology along with a debunking of certain oft-heard talking points such as "ISIS has nothing to do with Islam." Essential reading for anyone interested in ISIS and/or Islamic extremism.

Paulo Freire

Strangers indeed.

Reviewed in Germany on December 19, 2020

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In this book, Graeme Wood interviews several of the leading recruiters and ideologues of the Islamic State. He asks them:``What do you guys want?''. The answers are clear, concise and very well formulated. They are not the answers most people want to hear. They are also powerful testimony to the immense, enduring and almost unstoppable power of human stupidity. Reading this, the words of Schiller came to my mind: Gegen Dummheit kaeumpfen Gottter selbst Vergebens.

I could not put this book down. Extremely well written, extremely entertaining and satisfying.

Bhupendra Singh Manot

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on June 8, 2018

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Extraordinary, eye opener exposing the political motive.

Alex

Very interesting analysis that steers largely away from the dominant ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 22, 2017

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Very interesting analysis that steers largely away from the dominant considerations of the caliphate as purely lanatic or solely originaiting from failed western foreign policy, instead looking at the hyper literal interpretations of Islamic teachings and the group's pervasive proopoganda output appealing to disenfranchised young people across many corners of the world - all narrated/evidenced by interactions with a swathe of individuals with unique insights and varying connections to caliphate and Jihadist doctrines.

Peter P from South Australia

Dynamic scholaship

Reviewed in Australia on March 21, 2017

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The Way was a dynamic read which left me wanting more each time I put it down. The narrative led to clear coclusions for me about this critical phenomenon.

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