Book Talk: William McCants, "The ISIS Apocalypse"

On Friday, November 6 from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm, William McCants of the Brookings Institute will give a book talk on his recent publication "The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State". The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are appreciated.

At Brookings, McCants is a fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy and director of its project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. He is also adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University and has held various government and think tank positions related to Islam, the Middle East, and terrorism. From 2009 to 2011, McCants served as a U.S. State Department senior adviser for countering violent extremism. He has also held positions as program manager of the Minerva Initiative for the Department of Defense; an analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses and SAIC; and a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. 

His first book, "Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam" (Princeton University Press, 2011), traces the history of cultural debate in the Middle East after the Greeks, Romans and Arabs conquered the region. He is also working on a book about the scriptural history of the Quran. 

McCants has a doctorate from Princeton University and has lived in Israel, Egypt, and Lebanon.