100 books like Terror in the Name of God

Janine Di Giovanni is a daring foreign correspondent with decades of experience covering the Middle East. Her reporting from the trenches is riveting.

She takes you inside the massacres, as she waits in halls, tunnels, and burned-out buildings with those whose stories she came to tell. If it wasn’t true, this book would be read alongside the best thriller writers. 

I’ve always felt the story of my book was more parable than anything else. And Steinbeck’s The Pearl is one of the best.

“Be careful what you wish for” is a powerful theme, and The Pearl answers it with a moral wallop in less than a hundred pages. This is a constant reminder that not only is less more, but in the hands of a master, a parable can be a complete, compelling, and life-changing experience. Something I aspire to every day. 

My intrigue with the cost of transformation, mortality, and morality led me to the vampire genre. In my search for books, I discovered an amazing author, Andy Davidson. I was captivated by his book, In the Valley of the Sun. I searched him out to let him know he elevated the vampire genre for me, and his southern gothic setting was extraordinary.

I can’t think of a better recommendation if you’re connected to the world of vampires. 

This book, by Pulitzer prize winner Robert Olen Butler, is in three parts. Transcripts of inspiring lectures are followed by well-edited accounts of individual coaching sessions. These provide very useful nuggets of practical wisdom about unblocking habitual patterns that get in the way of flowing writing practice – habitual patterns that every writer faces and needs to deal with. The stories analysed in the book are found in the final part. An appendix follows, with a story by Butler called ‘Open Arms’, which demonstrates his skill as a writer. A theme that flows through the book is ‘yearning’ – and the book invites you to engage with this theme… with open arms. It’s a work that I go to when I’m stuck – it never fails to inspire.

This is an immensely readable book and a wonderful introduction to the very different ways in which violence might be interpreted from a dizzying range of perspectives.

Schinkel urges us to reflect on our appetites for violence in our reading matter, our cinema and theatre-going, and our hunger for news. He also poses thorny questions about the ‘productive’ potential of violent action.

In this narrative of the Munich Olympic Games the authors demonstrate that sport and politics were closely intertwined. Much of the planning for the event was based on that of the 1936 Nazi extravaganza but aimed at promoting a different international image, that of German post-war modernity: this at a time when Cold War tensions were easing, with neighbouring East Germany receiving IOC recognition and entering a team under its own flag. The Black September terrorist attack is dealt with briefly and more time is spent discussing the political aftermath, both short and long-term. The book supports my belief that sport is intensely political: sometimes even picking a team is a political act and claiming that sport and politics do not mix is actually a political statement.

Rebecca and Russell Dobash had studied men's violence against their female partners for decades and were already heroes of the women's movement when they began interviewing incarcerated killers in Britain. Two fine books have resulted, one focused on men who killed women, the other on men who killed men. It is the former, especially the section on intimate partner homicide, that I find most captivating. The Dobashes skilfully blend national statistics with the self-serving testimony of their interviewees, who minimize their lethal acts as things that "happened" rather than things that they did, and apparently believe themselves to be the victims. These insights are essential.    

Why did anti-Chinese violence continue to rise even after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, reaching a terrible peak in 1885 and 1886?

In a powerful reinterpretation of Chinese exclusion, Beth Lew-Williams reveals how the 1882 act was deliberately limited in scope, poorly funded, and loosely enforced—because immigration policy at this time was still governed by diplomacy. Only in the late 1880s, with China perceived as weak, did the US unilaterally abrogate its treaty obligations and move toward outright exclusion.

The chronology really matters here: for Chinese immigrants it was a question not just of entry or exclusion, but of life and death. Deftly situating anti-Chinese violence in overlapping regional, national, and international contexts, Lew Williams shows how the idea of the immigrant “alien” emerged in tandem with national citizenship during the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 

Valentine handles some very heavy topics beautifully.

Many of the characters are connected by only one thread: they are women trying to survive in West Texas in the early 1970s. It centers around a brutal incident and the quest to find justice for a Mexican teenage girl who was violently assaulted.

Throughout the story we get such an intimate look at these women’s lives. I felt like I knew them. I felt like I was sitting right next to them in their kitchen or on their front porch.

These women were all hardened by the trials life had thrown at them, and were battling the urge to protect themselves with the urge to protect one another. I loved this book because it was just so honest. 

I learned much about the causes of violence in human relations from this book’s compelling explanations of how peaceful negotiations can break down, thus leading to war.

I appreciated the book’s wide-ranging applicability, which included interstate and civil wars, but also “wars” involving drug cartels, gangs, and other factions. As an economist, Blattman’s coverage of economic aspects of war and peace shines throughout the book, and his rich multidisciplinary perspectives nicely round out his analysis.

I especially like the book’s intuitive coverage of historical examples of how peace can slip away, as well as lessons learned that can aid in future efforts to avoid war.