Best of
Terrorism

2020

When the Tempest Gathers: From Mogadishu to the Fight Against ISIS, a Marine Special Operations Commander at War


Andrew Milburn - 2020
    The journey culminates in the story's centerpiece: the fight against ISIS - one which finally seems to make sense for the soldiers, sailors and Marines involved, in which the author is able to use the lessons of his harsh apprenticeship to lead the SOF task force under his command to hasten the Caliphate's eventual demise. Milburn combines self-effacing candor with the insight and skill of a natural story teller to make the reader experience what it's like to lead those who fight America's wars.

Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism


Christian Picciolini - 2020
    Cupp) exploration of how to heal a nation reeling from hate and violence.Today's extremist violence surges into our lives from what seems like every direction -- vehicles hurtling down city sidewalks; cyber-threats levied against political leaders and backed up with violence; automatic weapons unleashed on mall shoppers, students, and the faithful in houses of worship. As varied as the violent acts are the attackers themselves -- neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the alt-right, InCels, and Islamist jihadists, to name just a few. In a world where hate has united communities that traffic in radical doctrines and rationalize their use of violence to rally the disaffected, the fear of losing a loved one to extremism or falling victim to terrorism has become almost universal.Told with startling honesty and intimacy, Breaking Hate is both the inside story of how extremists lure the unwitting to their causes and a guide for how everyday Americans can win them-and our civil democracy-back. Former extremist Christian Picciolini unravels this sobering narrative from the frontlines, where he has worked for two decades as a peace advocate and "hate breaker." He draws from the firsthand experiences of extremists he has helped to disengage, revealing how violent movements target the vulnerable and exploit their essential human desires, and how the right interventions can save lives.Along the way, Picciolini solves the puzzle of why extremism has come to define our era, laying bare the ways in which modern society-from "fake news" and social media propaganda to coded language and a White House that inflames rather than heals-has polarized and radicalized an entire generation.Piercing, empathetic, and unrestrained, Breaking Hate tells the sweeping story of the challenge of our time and provides a roadmap to overcoming it.

The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project


Krithika Varagur - 2020
    Journalist Krithika Varagur, a longtime chronicler of religion and politics, tells the story of Saudi influence as it has never been told before, in a book reported across the breadth of the Muslim world, from Nigeria to Indonesia to Kosovo.The Call connects the dots on Saudi Arabia's campaign to propagate its brand of ultraconservative Islam worldwide after it became oil-rich in the 20th century. Varagur visits diverse outposts of its influence, from a Saudi university in Jakarta to a beleaguered Shi'a movement in Nigeria. She finds that the campaign has had remarkably broad and sometimes uniform effects, from the intolerance of religious minorities to the rise of powerful Saudi-educated clerics. The kingdom has spent billions of dollars on its da'wa, or call to Islam, at many points with the direct support of the United States. But what have been the lasting effects of Saudi influence today? And what really happened to their campaign in the 21st century, after oil revenues slumped and after their activities became increasingly subject to international scrutiny? Drawing upon dozens of interviews, government records, and historical research, The Call lays out what we really talk about when we talk about Saudi money.

The Khalistan Conspiracy: A Former R&AW Officer Unravels the Path to 1984


GBS Sidhu - 2020
    With a timeline that moves from seven years before to a decade after 1984, the book strives to answer critical questions that continue to linger till today.The narrative moves from Punjab to Canada, the US, Europe and Delhi, looking to sift the truth from the political obfuscation and opportunism, examining the role that the ruling party allegedly played, and the heart-rending violence that devoured thousands of innocent lives in its aftermath.

The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad


Thomas Hegghammer - 2020
    Killed in mysterious circumstances in 1989 in Peshawar, Pakistan, he remains one of the most influential jihadi ideologues of all time. Here, in the first in-depth biography of Azzam, Thomas Hegghammer explains how Azzam came to play this role and why jihadism went global at this particular time. It traces Azzam's extraordinary life journey from a West Bank village to the battlefields of Afghanistan, telling the story of a man who knew all the leading Islamists of his time and frequented presidents, CIA agents, and Cat Stevens the pop star. It is, however, also a story of displacement, exclusion, and repression that suggests that jihadism went global for fundamentally local reasons.

Mayhem: Unanswered Questions about the Tsarnaev Brothers, the Us Government and the Boston Marathon Bombing


Michele McPhee - 2020
    --T. J. English, New York Times-bestselling author. This thrilling and meticulously researched account is an eye opener for anyone with lingering questions. Investigative journalist Michele R. McPhee reports the details and delivers the facts, piecing together the puzzle so readers are able to come to their own conclusions.This page-turning narrative goes a long way toward answering questions that still linger about the notorious Boston Marathon bombing, such as: Where were the bombs made? And what had been Tamerlan Tsarnaev's relationship to the FBI?Mayhem casts a spotlight on the US Government's relationship with the older Tsarnaev brother as his younger brother, Dzhokhar, continues his efforts to have his death sentence commuted.The federal government may be forced to confirm a longstanding relationship with Tamerlan and its decision to shield him from investigation for the Sept. 11, 2011 ISIS-style triple murder of three friends. As they infamously did with Whitey Bulger, federal agents appear to have protected Tamerlan because of his value as a paid informant. Mayhem is a substantially revised and updated first paperback edition of Michele R. McPhee's earlier book about the bombing, Maximum Harm.

The Burning School : The Untold Story of Kashmir


Sandesh Raj - 2020
    Homes and schools have been burnt to the ground. The government is looking the other way, locals are frustrated, and the youth have gone astray. In the midst of this is the mammoth task of coaching deserving students to help them crack one of the toughest exams in the country, the IIT entrance. Too many hurdles and too less time.

Batla House: An Encounter That Shook the Nation


Karnal Singh - 2020
    

Homegrown: ISIS in America


Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens - 2020
    This book, from one of the leading counter-terror centres, draws on first-hand interviews with former American Islamic State members and law enforcement officials who tracked them, and includes detailed analysis of the court cases against them and their social media presence. Homegrown reveals how and why ISIS was able to radicalize and recruit a new generation of jihadist sympathizers in America.

The Sins of Others


Florian Schneider - 2020
    

Chemical Warrior: Syria, Salisbury and Saving Lives at War


Hamish de Bretton-Gordon - 2020
    For thirty years, Hamish has served and volunteered in conflict zones around the world. As the army's foremost chemical weapons expert, he built a unique first-hand understanding of how to prevent attacks and train doctors on the frontline - saving countless lives in the process. After suffering near-death experiences time and again, Hamish discovered he had a ticking time bomb in his own chest: a heart condition called Sudden Death Syndrome that could kill him at any time. But with a new awareness for the fragility of life, he fought harder to make his count. Despite facing extraordinary personal danger, Hamish has unearthed evidence of multiple chemical attacks in Syria and continues to advise the government at the highest level, including after the 2018 Novichok poisoning in Salisbury. Lifting the lid on Hamish's unique world of battlefield expertise and humanitarian work, Chemical Warrior is a thrilling story of bravery and compassion.

American Women’s Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote 1776–1965


Susan Ware - 2020
    The voices of legendary figures in the suffrage struggle like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone join those of black, Chinese, and American Indian women and men who expanded its directions and aims, as well as anti-suffragists worried about where universal suffrage might lead the country.Expertly curated and introduced by scholar Susan Ware, 90 pieces by over 70 writers tell the full history of the movement—from Abigail Adams in 1776, urging that the Continental Congress attend to women’s political and economic rights, to the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 that took up that call again; from the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which finally ended the Jim Crow era disenfranchisement of black women and men in the South. Here are Maria W. Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Mabel Lee, Constance Baker Motley, and many more arguing for suffrage for women and men of all races; presidents Grover Cleveland writing an anti-suffrage editorial and Woodrow Wilson urging passage of the Nineteenth Amendment as a wartime measure; Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s groundbreaking suffragist play; and stinging satire by Marie Jenney Howe and Alice Duer Miller. Here too are the women who campaigned against suffrage, as well as the women who picketed, marched, and were arrested for their belief that the right to vote is the heart of citizenship. Braided together into one coherent narrative, the writings gathered in this collection chart as never before the tumultuous course of early feminist activism in America.American Women’s Suffrage includes an introduction, headnotes, explanatory endnotes, and an index, as well as sixteen pages of full-color illustrations and photographs.

The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism


Gary M. Shiffman - 2020
    Humans ultimately seek survival for themselves and their communities in a world of competition. While the dynamics of 'us vs. them' are divisive, they also help us to survive. Access to increasingly larger markets, facilitated through digital communications and social media, creates more transnational opportunities for deception, coercion, and violence. If the economist's perspective helps to explain violence, then it must also facilitate insights into promoting peace and security. If we can approach violence as behavioral scientists, then we can also better structure our institutions to create policies that make the world a more secure place, for us and for future generations.

The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland


James H. Madison - 2020
    It is a question that echoes as loudly today as it did in the early twentieth century. But who really joined the Klan? Were they "hillbillies, the Great Unteachables" as one journalist put it? It would be comforting to think so, but how then did they become one of the most powerful political forces in our nation's history?In The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland, renowned historian James H. Madison details the creation and reign of the infamous organization. Through the prism of their operations in Indiana and the Midwest, Madison explores the Klan's roots in respectable white protestant society. Convinced that America was heading in the wrong direction because of undesirable "un-American" elements, Klan members did not see themselves as bigoted racist extremists but as good Christian patriots joining proudly together in a righteous moral crusade.The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland offers a detailed history of this powerful organization and examines how, through its use of intimidation, religious belief, and the ballot box, the ideals of Klan in the 1920s have on-going implications for America today.

The Bomb Squad: Clash of the Patriots (Book One)


Neil Perry Gordon - 2020
    Harold Schwartz, administrator of the prestigious Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital and a German spy. Along with his father, a dealer in lethal weapons and a lifelong friend of Kaiser Wilhelm, Schwartz is hell-bent on distracting the Americans from entering the war.Meanwhile, the British Secret Intelligence Service recruits highly regarded New York City police detective Max Rothman to assemble a team of German-speaking specialists, known as the Bomb Squad. Their mission is to investigate the sudden surge of German espionage activity wreaking havoc along the Eastern Seaboard and among steamships attempting to cross the Atlantic.The Bomb Squad follows these men’s exploits through an interconnecting tale of love, loss, friendship, and betrayal, stretching from American shores to the epicenter of German power during a time when the world is at war.

Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood


Casey Ryan Kelly - 2020
    Trump’s slogan “Make American Great Again,” white masculinity has become increasingly organized around melancholic attachments to an imagined past when white men were still atop the social hierarchy. How and why are white men increasingly identifying as victims of social, economic, and political change? Casey Ryan Kelly’s Apocalypse Man seeks to answer this question by examining textual and performative examples of white male rhetoric—as found among online misogynist and incel communities, survivalists and “doomsday preppers,” gender-motivated mass shooters, gun activists, and political demagogues. Using sources ranging from reality television and Reddit manifestos to gun culture and political rallies, Kelly ultimately argues that death, victimhood, and fatalism have come to underwrite the constitution of contemporary white masculinity.

The Isis Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement


Haroro J Ingram - 2020
    Despite all this attention, persistent myths continue to shape--and misdirect--public understanding and strategic policy decisions. A significant factor in this trend has been a strong disinclination to engage critically with Islamic State's speeches and writings--as if doing so reflects empathy with the movement's goals or, even more absurdly, may itself lead to radicalisation.Going beyond the descriptive and the sensationalist, this volume presents and analyses a series of milestone Islamic State primary source materials. Scholar-practitioners with field experience in confronting the movement explore and contextualise its approach to warfare, propaganda and governance, examining the factors behind its dramatic evolution from failed proto-state in 2010 to standard-bearer of global jihadism in 2014, to besieged insurgency in 2018. The ISIS Reader will help anyone--students and journalists, military personnel, civil servants and inquisitive observers--to better understand not only the evolution of Islamic State and the dynamics of asymmetric warfare, but the importance of primary sources in doing so.

Undercover War: Britain's Special Forces and Their Secret Battle Against the IRA


Henry Gow - 2020
    For thirty years, Britain's Special Forces waged a ferocious, secretive struggle against a ruthless and implacable enemy.Henry Gow offers a unique insight into nearly every major military action and operation in the Province, having served seven tours with the Parachute Regiment, followed by passing selection for 14 Intelligence Company then completing six years with the SAS anti-terrorism team, before joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary, receiving two commendations for bravery during his six-year service.This book is his blistering account of the history of Britain's war against the IRA between 1970 and 1988 - the most murderous years of the conflict - drawn from his own operational experience and backed by first-hand accounts and unpublished documents from personal contacts in the military and the police.From new insights into high-profile killings and riveting accounts of enemy contact, to revelations about clandestine missions and strategies in combating a merciless enemy, Undercover War is the definitive inside story of the battle against the IRA, one of the most dangerous and effective terrorist organisations in recent history.

Landscapes of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese Canadians


Jordan Stanger-Ross - 2020
    They were told to bring only one suitcase each and officials vowed to protect the rest. Instead, Japanese Canadians were dispossessed, all their belongings either stolen or sold. The definitive statement of a major national research partnership, Landscapes of Injustice reinterprets the internment of Japanese Canadians by focusing on the deliberate and permanent destruction of home through the act of dispossession. All forms of property were taken. Families lost heirlooms and everyday possessions. They lost decades of investment and labour. They lost opportunities, neighbourhoods, and communities; they lost retirements, livelihoods, and educations. When Japanese Canadians were finally released from internment in 1949, they had no homes to return to. Asking why and how these events came to pass and charting Japanese Canadians' diverse responses, this book details the implications and legacies of injustice perpetrated under the cover of national security. In Landscapes of Injustice the diverse descendants of dispossession work together to understand what happened. They find that dispossession is not a chapter that closes or a period that neatly ends. It leaves enduring legacies of benefit and harm, shame and silence, and resilience and activism.