Blood and Rage
A Cultural history of Terrorism
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
A far-reaching history of terrorism across the world from its beginnings to the modern-day, from the highly acclaimed author of ‘Sacred Causes’ and ‘Earthly Powers’.
Basing his study on a wide range of sources and key players from the world of terrorism, Burleigh explains and defines the meaning of terrorism and marks its progression from its hard to trace beginnings to the modern-day.
He begins with the first modern terrorist groups: the Irish Republican Brotherhood – the precursors of the IRA – who played a key role in the formation of an Irish Republican ideology. He goes on to look at Tsarist Russia where the 'intelligentsia' launched attacks on organs of state, left-wing fighting against 'Fascism' and 'Nazism' in the 70's and 80's in western Germany and Italy, and Britain and Spain's long and drawn out battles with their own terrorist groups the IRA and ETA respectively. He ends with the first globally inclusive account of Islamist terrorism since 1980s till the present.
Primarily, Burleigh aims to elucidate the mind-set of people who use political violence and explore the background and the milieu of the people involved. He will be interviewing several senior military and police figures who were responsible for security in Northern Ireland, as well as former soldiers who took part in operations such as 'Bloody Sunday'. He will examine the Middle East which, since 1970's, has been the world's epicentre for terrorism and the mythologies and delusions of Islamist radicals.
Finally, he makes clear that the west has considerable resources to comprehend and combat terrorism – despite consistently failing to do so – and highlights the shamefully inadequate nature of US public diplomacy. The book also includes a number of practical suggestions as to how terrorism can be combated both ideologically and militarily.
'Blood and Rage' is an unrivalled study that sheds an insightful new light, and a refreshingly complex angle, on a plight that threatens to affect the world at large for many years to come and establishes Michael Burleigh as one of the most original, learned and important historians of our time.
Reviews
Praise for ‘Earthly Powers’:
‘Stimulating…fascinating and beautifully produced with superb colour illustrations and rich footnotes…Burleigh has written a thought-provoking, deeply civilised book.’ Independent
‘“Earthly Powers” can only cement Michael Burleigh's reputation as one of the leading historians of our time. It is a brilliantly wide-ranging and profoundly rewarding treatment of the part that religious instinct has played in the history of modern Europe.’ Independent on Sunday
About the author
Michael Burleigh's two part history of politics and religion, Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes, were two of the most acclaimed books of 2005 and 2006 respectively. His work has been translated into fifteen languages and his The Third Reich: A New History, won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001. He writes for several newspapers on religion, history and politics. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Board at the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich and wrote this book while a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is married and lives in London.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Burleigh (Earthly Powers), one of the leading English-language scholars of the role of ideas in the modern world, makes another major contribution in this pull-no-punches cultural study of terrorism as it has been lived and practiced for a century and a half. Burleigh sees modern terrorism's roots in the mid 19th century, with the emergence of the Irish Fenians, the Russian nihilists, the Western anarchists who used fear induced by violence to compensate for their lack of political power. Their tactics were adopted in the mid 20th century by movements seeking decolonization, like the Palestinian Black September, Italy's Red Brigades and Germany's Red Army Faction. By century's end, terrorism further mutated into a tool for marginalized "local nations" like the Basques. Most recently, terrorism has become identified with what Burleigh calls the "world rage of Islamism." Burleigh's case studies demonstrate mercilessly that terrorism is "a career, a culture, and a way of life" attractive for its own sake as well as its ostensible objectives. The terrorist milieu, the author demonstrates convincingly, is "morally squalid," intellectually bankrupt and politically barren. Burleigh considers the lessons history has to teach us, though he eschews policy recommendations.
