Drawing on a vast array of oral, ethnographic, and documentary material, Collins (Univ. of Minnesota), once a recipient of the Carnegie Scholar Award for innovative research in international security and a consultant to various international organizations, gives readers a stark reminder of the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Collins’s intimate engagement with the Central Asian republics emerging since the 1990s informs this uniquely comprehensive study of the recent history of regional Islamic groups with broad political agendas. The men and women whom Collins interviewed became the primary agents of the disruptions throughout Central Asia and spilling into the Syrian war, making this massive work the most valuable resource for scholars and policy makers concerned with political Islam. The book’s underlying lesson of how state repression in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras has led to religious mobilizations is no doubt intended to sharpen analysis of the region as a primary strategic and security concern. It also serves notice about a new wave of persecution awaiting Muslims, who are confronted by the same conditions as the Central Asian Islamist movements, which have contributed to the Tajik and Afghan civil wars and the foreign fighters in Syria.