Day of the Assassins. A History of Political Murder - Michael Burleigh

1) Day of the Assassins: A History of Political Murder – Michael Burleigh
Picador | 2021 | EPUB

The traditional image of a political assassin is a lone wolf with a rifle, aimed squarely at the head of those they wish to kill. But while there has been enormous speculation on what lay behind notorious individual political assassinations – from Julius Caesar to John F. Kennedy – the phenomenon itself has scarcely been examined as a special category of political violence, one not motivated by personal gain or vengeance.

Now, in Day of the Assassins, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh explores the many facets of political assassination, explaining why it is more frequent in certain types of society than others and asking if assassination can either bring about change or prevent it, and whether, like a contagious disease, political murder can be catching. Focusing chiefly on the last century and a half, Burleigh takes readers around the world, from Europe, Russia, Israel and the United States to the Congo, India, Iran, Laos, Rwanda, South Africa and Vietnam. And, as we travel, we revisit notable assassinations, among them Leon Trotsky, Hendrik Verwoerd, Juvénal Habyarimana, Indira Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin and Jamal Khashoggi.

Throughout, the assassins themselves are at the centre of the narrative, whether they were cool, well-trained professional killers, like the agents of the NKVD or the KGB – or, indeed, the CIA – or men motivated by the politicization of their private miseries, like Gavrilo Princip or Lee Harvey Oswald. Even some of those who were demonstrably mad had method in their madness and acted for comprehensible political motives.

Combining human drama, questions of political morality and the sheer randomness of events, Day of the Assassins is a riveting insight into the politics of violence.

2) Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965 – Michael Burleigh
Penguin Books | 2014 | EPUB

The Cold War reigns in popular imagination as a period of tension between the two post-World War II superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, without direct conflict. Drawing from new archival research, prize-winning historian Michael Burleigh gives new meaning to the seminal decades of 1945 to 1965 by examining the many, largely forgotten, “hot” wars fought around the world. As once-great Western colonial empires collapsed, counter-insurgencies campaigns raged in the Philippines, the Congo, Iran, and other faraway places. Dozens of new nations struggled into existence, the legacies of which are still felt today. Placing these vicious struggles alongside the period-defining United States and Soviet standoffs in Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, Burleigh swerves from Algeria to Kenya, to Vietnam and Kashmir, interspersing top-level diplomatic negotiations with portraits of the charismatic local leaders. The result is a dazzling work of history, a searing analysis of the legacy of imperialism and a reminder of just how the United States became the world’s great enforcer.

3) Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror – Michael Burleigh
Harper Perennial | 2008 | EPUB

Beginning with the chaotic post-World War I landscape, in which religious belief was one way of reordering a world knocked off its axis, Sacred Causes is a penetrating critique of how religion has often been camouflaged by politics. All the bloody regimes and movements of the twentieth century are masterfully captured here, from Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Franco’s Spain through to the modern scourge of terrorism. Eloquently and persuasively combining an authoritative survey of history with a timely reminder of the dangers of radical secularism, Burleigh asks why no one foresaw the religious implications of massive Third World immigration, and he deftly investigates what are now driving calls for a civic religion to counter the terrorist threats that have so shocked the West.

4) Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism – Michael Burleigh
Harper Perennial | 2009 | EPUB

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’. The paperback edition will be updated to cover recent events – including the recent terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 and the continued military clash in Gaza in early 2009.

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.

Burleigh takes us from the origins of terrorism in the Irish Republican Brotherhood – the precursors of the IRA – on to look at Tsarist Russia, where the ‘intelligentsia’ launched attacks on organs of state, and left-wing fighting against ‘Fascism’ and ‘Nazism’ in the 1970s and 1980s in western Germany and Italy. But such nationalist terrrorism has in turn been eclipsed by international jihadist violence, largely driven by widespread resentment of the successful societes of the West. Burleigh explores the background and the milieu of people engaged in careers of political violence, and examines their various mindsets as revealed by their actions rather than their words. He makes clear that the West has considerable resources to comprehend and combat terrorism and shows how history enables us to see how terrrorism can be effectively contained and countered – if only by avoiding some of the major mistakes of the past.

An unrivalled study that sheds an insightful new light on a plight that threatens to affect the world at large for many years to come, ‘Blood and Rage’ establishes Michael Burleigh as one of the most original, learned and important historians of our time.