60 books like Incendiary

I love the unexpected beauty and horror of this book which is a collection of stories and a novella. The title also made me wonder, how do you escape a leper colony? Author Tiphanie Yanique is a Caribbean writer whose stunningly poetic voice haunted me long after I finished reading her book. As I read it, I imagined the narrator's Caribbean accent soaking into every syllable. In the key short story, Yanique sets us down in a leper colony on a deserted island for the dying and yet manages to leave room for the miraculous as well. Describing one leper she says, "And when a man with no hands claims that he can fly, you listen."

Murakami's world is magic realist by default. It's often infused with American pop culture, jazz, secret passageways, and curious cats. The Strange Library is a perfect introduction to the author's world and it makes a nice gift. The book is adorned with pop illustrations and highly saturated colors. In this short novel a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep/man plot their escape from a nightmarish library. I have read the author's 1Q84 opus of 1,000 pages but it is his short works -- his short stories and novellas -- that have stayed with me the most.

Not only is this novel about death and dying (10,000 times, to be exact), but it also features Death as a main character. So it gets bonus points for hitting both of those marks when it comes to my love of dark comedies about death. But it’s also a story about finding a reason for living, that reason being the aforementioned Death, who just so happens to be the main character’s love interest. It’s complicated. At turns both thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. Reincarnation stories have always intrigued me and this one does it in a fashion unlike any other.

This book smashed everything I thought about memoirs into pieces. Here is a vivid retelling of an abusive relationship that grabbed me not only with its pain but with its form.

From chapter to chapter, Machado hops and skips through genres, utilizing a treasure trove of styles and formats to evoke the best and worst parts of her experience. It’s a masterful experiment that works on every page. That achievement in and of itself makes this book worthwhile.

But also factor in that it’s a queer story. It’s a groundbreaking narrative that never forgets all of the elements that arise when queerness and cruelty collide. This is a high-wire act that Machado pulls off with gusto. It’s easily one of the best books I’ve read in years.

This book turned the field of Terrorism Studies on its head. Historical sociologist Lisa Stampnitzky demonstrates that the legion of terrorism experts who rose to prominence in North America, Western Europe, and Israel in the 1970s were not neutral analysts of political violence. Rather, through their intellectual work, much of it funded with government grants, terrorism scholars helped construct the contemporary meaning of terrorism as a threat to society fundamentally different from other forms of violence, crime, and political activity. This book made it clear that we can’t understand the history of “terrorism” without analyzing the history of the term itself, and how the use of this term in law, academia, politics, international relations, and popular culture has shaped political power and violent conflicts between states and insurgents.

The field of terrorism research is dominated overwhelmingly by social scientists. However, Richard English has established himself as a leader in the historical study of terrorism and counterterrorism. As the title suggests, this book tackles a difficult, frequently avoided question. Using four case studies—al-Qaida, the Provisional IRA, Hamas, and the Basque ETA in Spain—English demonstrates that the answers are complex, and best explicated through long-term historical analysis. Terrorism has augmented other types of political action, enflamed broader political crises, and provoked disproportionate state responses, frequently with high costs and unintended consequences. While terrorism sometimes has achieved some of its perpetrators’ political goals, it also often has backfired. English shows that terrorism history is not only bloody, but messy, and entwined with wider conflicts between states and dissidents.

Christian/Inspirational fantasy and thriller with a solid portal fantasy plot. I read several Ted Dekker books and series when I was a teen, but this one stood out to me because of the notion of two realms and how a protagonist could be a normal human being in one realm, Earth, and a savior, a leader, a “chosen one” in the other. 

The 1970s was a pivotal decade in the history of terrorism and counterterrorism. Airplane hijacking became widespread and widely televised during this period, as did other forms of politically motivated hostage-taking, bombings, and assassinations. Drawing from archival research in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, Zoller explains how states of the Global North responded with efforts at international cooperation, particularly as Palestinian nationalist militants and their allies traversed borders to enact ostensibly anticolonial violence far beyond contested territories in the Global South. International antiterrorism accords met limited success, however, as they frequently conflicted with various states’ geopolitical interests. Zoller demonstrates that by the early 1980s, multilateralism had given way to a militarized form of counterterrorism led by the United States that established a precedent for the post-9/11 War on Terrorism.

I learned a great deal from this book’s insightful and wide-ranging coverage of the motives of terrorists; economic, political, and social causes and effects of terrorism; and government and private-sector counterterrorism efforts.

I especially like the book’s accessible coverage of leading research results in the field including risk factors for terrorism and conundrums associated with policy efforts to stymie terrorism. I loved how the book offered a fruitful blend of theoretical models, data trends, empirical results, and policy perspectives.

The authors are economists, so the book is strongly economic in approach, yet multidisciplinary perspectives are richly woven into the chapters, giving rise to a true “political economy” of terrorism.

This ranks as one of the best books I’ve read. It cut me to the heart, brought tears, and yet brought hope.

It’s a complicated story about a woman who waited years for the man she loved. Then she moved on and is about to marry a new love, Eric, when John returns. He dreamed of Ava during his captivity and thought they would pick up where they left off but it doesn’t happen. She’s forced to make a terrible, gut-wrenching decision and must live with it.

But the story ends with hope for John and the future and there’s a follow-up story called One Year Back that continues the story. Although Ava’s not a widow, she felt like one and as a widow, that resonated with me.