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| A History of Terrorism
ISBN: 9781315083483
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Politics & International Relations; Introductory Politics;
Assassinations, bombings, hijackings, diplomatic kidnappings-terrorism is the most publicized form of political violence. The history of terrorism goes back a very long time, but the very fact that there is such a history has frequently been ignored, even suppressed. This may be because terrorism has not appeared with equal intensity at all times. When terrorism reappeared in the late twentieth century after a period of relative calm, there was the tendency to regard it as a new phenomenon, without precedent. The psychological study of terrorism has never been much in fashion. But this neglect has left a number of crucial questions unanswered. Among these are why some people who share the same convictions turn to terrorism and others do not. What is terrorism's true impact on international politics? What influence might it exert in the future?A History of Terrorism completes Walter Laqueur's pioneering and authoritative study of guerrilla warfare and terrorist activity. He charts the history of political terror from nineteenth-century Europe, through the anarchists of the 1880s and 1890s, the left- and right-wing clashes during the twentieth century, and the multinational operations of Arab and other groups today. Laqueur examines the sociology of terrorism: funding, intelligence gathering, weapons and tactics, informers and countermeasures, and the crucial role of the media. He probes the "terrorist personality" and how terrorists have been depicted in literature and films. The doctrine of systematic terrorism and current interpretations of terrorism, its common patterns, motives, and aims, are unflinchingly faced and clearly explicated. Finally, Laqueur considers the effectiveness of terrorism and examines the ominous possibility of nuclear blackmail.Challenging accepted assumptions, forecasting the changes in terrorist activity that will affect tomorrow's headlines, Walter Laqueur demystifies terrorism without belittling its importance. Togethe
Walter Louis Laqueur was born in Breslau, Germany on May 26, 1921. At the age of 17, he fled just a few days before Kristallnacht and found his way to Palestine, where he was known as Ze'ev. He worked briefly on a kibbutz before moving to Jerusalem, where he spent a year enrolled in the Hebrew University and covered the Middle East as a journalist. In 1955, he moved to London, where he was a founder and editor of The Journal of Contemporary History and a founder of Survey, a foreign affairs journal. From 1965 to 1994 he was director of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, a leading archive in London. He became a scholar of the Holocaust, the collapse of the Soviet Union, European decline, the Middle East conflict, and global terrorism. He wrote numerous books including A History of Zionism, A History of Terrorism, The Terrible Secret, Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, and The Future of Terrorism: ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Alt-Right written with Christopher Wall. His memoirs included Thursday's Child Has Far to Go; Worlds Ago; Best of Times, Worst of Times; and Reflections of a Veteran Pessimist. He was also the editor of The Holocaust Encyclopedia. He died on September 30, 2018 at the age of 97. (Bowker Author Biography) |
