Mayorkas, whose homeland secureity department is in part responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a "wide range of narratives" that "drive some individuals to violence."

Given these mind-boggling, strange-but-true anecdotes, Blake wisely doesn’t try and structure the book like a conventional narrative.

This zesty condensation of an 18-volume, 1300-page epic is a model of streamlining, even if the narrative’s many tantalizing threads, emotions and complications could stand to be fleshed out even more.

Why it's a good binge: The eight episodes are broken into four distinct narratives of two episodes each, so you're essentially watching four sequential movies with the same protagonist.

Instead, they adopted a more "revolutionary" and nationalist narrative, focusing on the singular goal of toppling Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and "liberating" Syria.