This is a summary of Richard Engel's And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East.

Based on two decades of reporting, NBC's chief foreign correspondent's riveting story of the Middle East revolutions, the Arab Spring, war, and terrorism seen up close - sometimes dangerously so.

When he was just 23, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab news sources and got a call that a busload of Italian tourists were massacred at a Cairo museum. This was his first view of the carnage the years would pile on. Over two decades Engel has been under fire, blown out of hotel beds, taken hostage. He has watched Mubarak and Morsi in Egypt arrested and condemned, reported from Jerusalem, been through the Lebanese war, covered shooting matches in Iraq, interviewed Libyan rebels who toppled Gaddafi, reported from Syria as al Qaeda stepped in, and was kidnapped in the Syrian crosscurrents of fighting. He went into Afghanistan with the Taliban and to Iraq with ISIS.

In the pause-resisting And Then All Hell Broke Loose, he shares his adventurous tale. Engel takes chances, though not reckless ones, and keeps a level head and a sense of humor as well as a grasp of history in the making. Reporting as NBC's chief foreign correspondent, he reveals his unparalleled access to the major figures, the gritty soldiers, and the helpless victims in the Middle East during this watershed time. We can experience the unforgettable suffering and despair of the local populations. Engel's vivid descriptions are intimate and personal. Importantly, it is a succinct and authoritative account of the ever-changing currents in that dangerous land.

This summary is aimed at those who want to capture the gist of the book but don't have the current time to listen to the whole book.