What I’m currently reading:
Abu Bakr Naji’s Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which The Umma Will Pass (2004) translated by William McCants (translation funding provided by Harvard University’s John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies): an eye-opening manifesto on the Islamist jihadist plan to re-establish a Caliphate.
William McCants’ The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2015). There are a bunch of quick primers around on Islamic State. McCants is familiar with the source material. He has the language / political science background to understand Islamic State’s ideological vision.
Oliver Morin’s How Traditions Live and Die (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Morin posits a new framework for understanding cultural transmission as due to cognitive preferences rather than imitation. Provides theory-building to understand Abu Bakr Naji’s strategic vision and William McCants’ analysis of Islamic State.