Gaeme Wood over at the Atlantic has a riveting piece on "What ISIS really wants". Best long form investigative journalism I've read in nearly a decade. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

(Warning: It's really long, but answers a whole lot of questions that a whole lot of westerners, outsiders have about that group, the region, their funding, recruiting, idealogy and why they still haven't been defeated. Well worth a read.)