Cockburn has written three books on Iraq. The first, "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein", was written with his brother Andrew prior to the war in Iraq. The book was later re-published in Britain under the title "Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession". Two more books were written by Cockburn after the U.S. invasion, following his reporting from Iraq. "The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq" (2006) mixes first hand accounts with reporting. Cockburn's book is critical of the invasion as well as the Salafi fundamentalists who comprised much of the insurgency. "The Occupation" was nominated for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction. The second, "Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq" was published in 2008. "Muqtada" is a journalistic account of the recent history of the religiously and politically prominent Sadr family, the rise of Muqtada, and the development of the Sadrist Movement since the 2003 U.S. invasion. He is also the author of "The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising" (2014), which has been translated into nine languages, and "The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the New Sunni Revolution" (2015). Both are about how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was able to set up its own state in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.