The Revolutionists
The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 13, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • An epic, authoritative, gripping account of the years when a new wave of revolutionaries seized the skies and the streets to hold the world for ransom
In the 1970s, an unprecedented wave of international terrorism broke out around the world. More ambitious, networked and far-reaching than ever before, new armed groups terrorized the West with intricately planned plane hijackings and hostage missions, leaving governments scrambling to cope. Their motives were as diverse as their methods. Some sought to champion Palestinian liberation, others to topple Western imperialism or battle capitalism; a few simply sought adventure or power. Among them were the unflappable young Leila Khaled, sporting jewelry made from AK-47 ammunition; the maverick Carlos the Jackal with his taste for cigars, fine dining, and designer suits; and the radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang or the Japanese Red Army. Their attacks forged a lawless new battlefield thirty thousand feet in the air, evading the reach of security agencies, policymakers, and spies alike. Their operations rallied activist and networks in places where few had suspected their existence, leaving a trail of chaos from Bangkok to Paris to London to Washington, D.C.
Veteran foreign correspondent Jason Burke provides a thrilling account of this era of spectacular violence. Drawing on decades of research, recently declassified government files, still secret documents, and original interviews with hijackers, double agents, and victims still grieving their loved ones, The Revolutionists provides an unprecedented account of a period which definitively shaped today’s world and probes the complex relationship between violence, terrorism, and revolution. From the deserts of Jordan and the Munich Olympics to the Iranian Embassy Siege in London and the Beirut bombings of the early 1980s, Burke invites us into the lives and minds of the perpetrators of these attacks, as well as the government agents and top officials who sought to foil them. Charting, too, such shattering events as the Iranian Revolution and the Lebanese civil war, he shows how, by the early 1980s, a campaign for radical change led by secular, leftist revolutionaries had given way to a far more lethal movement of conservative religious fanaticism that would dominate the decades to come.
Driven by an indelible cast of characters moving at a breakneck pace, full of detail and drama, The Revolutionists is the definitive account of a dark and seismic decade.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This gripping work of narrative history takes readers inside a decade when the rules of political violence were rewritten in real time. British journalist Jason Burke traces how a loose network of revolutionary groups used hijackings, hostage crises, and spectacular attacks to draw attention to their political demands. Moving from Europe to the Middle East and beyond, it follows a web of ideologues, operatives, and opportunists whose actions shocked governments and reshaped public life. Drawing on deep reporting and firsthand accounts, Burke creates a portrait of how radical movements formed, grew, and ultimately gave way to more enduring—and dangerous—forms of extremism. It unfolds with the tension of a spy novel, connecting the personal lives of often-damaged individuals to seismic political shifts. The Revolutionists is an urgent and illuminating read that helps clarify how the modern age of terrorism took shape.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sweeping account from journalist Burke (The New Threat) charts the emergence of "a new kind of transnational terrorism" in the late 1960s, when loose networks of radicals, including the Baader-Meinhof gang and Carlos the Jackal, committed brazen acts of political violence on an unprecedented scale, from airplane hijackings to kidnappings and bombings. Their numbers were small—Burke recounts attacks in two dozen countries committed by roughly 100 perpetrators, among them "young women and old men... penniless refugees and scions of wealthy families." Drawing on dozens of interviews, Burke offers sober but humanizing profiles of these revolutionaries and their victims, along the way exploring how this "secular, often left-leaning revolutionary" movement born of anticolonial struggle evolved, by the end of the 1970s, into one dominated by "Islamic extremism." Across the decade, many of the political gains of decolonizing movements were reversed by the U.S. and its allies in the name of fighting communism, leading many radicals to see leftist politics as a failure and seek answers elsewhere. Meanwhile, right-wing extremist groups committed attacks in Europe and the Americas throughout the '70s, but "received far less political or media attention" than the "transnational" left. Thus, right-wing extremism, particularly Islamism, bubbled up powerfully but unlooked for, most spectacularly during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when the success of a rebellion organized by "radical clerics," rather than left-wing intellectuals, blindsided nearly everyone. Readers will find this a stunning and in-depth look at a tumultuous sea change in the global political order.
