In his new book, author and political commentator George J. Marlin, Chairman of Aid to the Church in Need - USA - an agency under the guidance of the Pope that supports the persecuted and suffering Church around the world - describes the sharp rise in Christian persecution in the Middle East. After brief narratives on the rise of Christianity, Islam, and terrorism in the Middle East, Marlin documents country by country, acts of twenty-first century Christian persecution that is nearing a bloody climax that could produce the unthinkable: a Middle East without Christianity and the destruction of an ancient patrimony that has been a vital link to the very birth of Christianity.