Here are 59 books that The Political Economy of Terrorism fans have personally recommended if you like
The Political Economy of Terrorism.
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Like many people, I am deeply troubled by the death and destruction from violent conflict. When I began my graduate work in economics at Cornell University, I was allowed to apply my economics learning to the problem of war. When I began teaching at Holy Cross College, my colleagues encouraged me to offer courses on the economics of war and peace. After many years of teaching, I compiled Principles of Conflict Economics (with John Carter) to serve as a textbook on economic aspects of conflict. I hope the book might encourage other economics professors and students to learn more about war and how to resolve conflicts nonviolently.
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.
“Why We Fight reflects Blattman’s expertise in economics, political science, and history… Blattman is a great storyteller, with important insights for us all.” —Richard H. Thaler, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and coauthor of Nudge
“Engaging and profound, this deeply searching book explains the true origins of warfare, and it illustrates the ways that, despite some contrary appearances, human beings are capable of great goodness.”—Nicholas A. Christakis author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Why did Russia attack Ukraine? Will China invade Taiwan and launch WWIII? Why has the number of civil wars…
Like many people, I am deeply troubled by the death and destruction from violent conflict. When I began my graduate work in economics at Cornell University, I was allowed to apply my economics learning to the problem of war. When I began teaching at Holy Cross College, my colleagues encouraged me to offer courses on the economics of war and peace. After many years of teaching, I compiled Principles of Conflict Economics (with John Carter) to serve as a textbook on economic aspects of conflict. I hope the book might encourage other economics professors and students to learn more about war and how to resolve conflicts nonviolently.
I especially like how this book powerfully demonstrates that economists should care deeply about violent conflicts because of the severe harms that violence inflicts on economies (and ultimately people) in both the short- and long-run.
The book also persuasively shows that peace advocates should seriously consider economics in their work because conflict prevention must get the economic policies right to avoid the outbreak (or renewal) of violence.
I felt that the book succeeded wonderfully as a primer by explaining important economic concepts in layperson terms, applying economic concepts to violence and peace issues across a wide range of countries (including in several mini case studies), and highlighting economics policies that promote long-term growth and development, macroeconomic stability, and stable peace.
Creating sound economic policy and a stable macroeconomic framework is essential to societies recovering from violent conflict, yet few practitioners have the background needed to apply economic concepts effectively. To provide practitioners with a concise but broad overview of macroeconomic fundamentals as they touch on violence afflicted states, Brauer and Dunne have created Peace Economics. Filling a gap in the literature on peace design from an economic perspective, Peace Economics extends beyond economic principles into the wider realm of social reconstitution, social contract, and social capital in the hopes of helping practitioners build a more stable peace. Peace Economics is…
Like many people, I am deeply troubled by the death and destruction from violent conflict. When I began my graduate work in economics at Cornell University, I was allowed to apply my economics learning to the problem of war. When I began teaching at Holy Cross College, my colleagues encouraged me to offer courses on the economics of war and peace. After many years of teaching, I compiled Principles of Conflict Economics (with John Carter) to serve as a textbook on economic aspects of conflict. I hope the book might encourage other economics professors and students to learn more about war and how to resolve conflicts nonviolently.
I especially like how this book widens the scope of analysis of humanitarian responses to include both human-made disasters (e.g., war, genocide, terrorism) and natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, cyclones).
I learned much from the author’s multidisciplinary perspectives on the economics of humanitarianism based on his decades-long policy experiences in humanitarian aid and development.
I found several chapters in the book to be unique or rarely found elsewhere including “The Humanitarian Market” (covering data and perspectives on the supply and demand of humanitarian aid), “Survival Economics” (covering the deep needs of individuals and families living through disasters), and “The Transformative Power of Humanitarian Crises” (on how disasters can be springboards for institutional reform and long-term development).
While the booming humanitarian sector faces daunting challenges, humanitarian economics emerges as a new field of study and practice--one that encompasses the economics and political economy of war, disaster, terrorism and humanitarianism. Carbonnier's book is the first to present humanitarian economics to a wide readership, defining its parameters, explaining its utility and convincing us why it matters. Among the issues he discusses are: how are emotions and altruism incorporated within a rational-choice framework? How do the economics of war and terrorism inform humanitarians' negotiations with combatants, and shed light on the role of aid in conflict? What do catastrophe bonds…
Like many people, I am deeply troubled by the death and destruction from violent conflict. When I began my graduate work in economics at Cornell University, I was allowed to apply my economics learning to the problem of war. When I began teaching at Holy Cross College, my colleagues encouraged me to offer courses on the economics of war and peace. After many years of teaching, I compiled Principles of Conflict Economics (with John Carter) to serve as a textbook on economic aspects of conflict. I hope the book might encourage other economics professors and students to learn more about war and how to resolve conflicts nonviolently.
I appreciated how this book took on the challenge of applying advanced mathematical modeling and simulation techniques to gain new insights into the social evolution of norms and institutions in societies, which is a critical topic in many fields, including conflict and peace economics.
I learned much from the book’s coverage of selected conflict and peace topics such as riots, revolutions, the 2010 Arab Spring movement, and the social evolution of cooperation. I especially like how the mathematical models in the book are described intuitively using wonderfully imaginative diagrams.
In this way, both the mathematically and non-mathematically inclined can come away with a richer understanding of human behavior in dynamically changing social systems.
Models of Society and Complex Systems introduces readers to a variety of different mathematical tools used for modelling human behaviour and interactions, and the complex social dynamics that drive institutions, conflict, and coordination. What laws govern human affairs? How can we make sense of the complexity of societies and how do individual actions, characteristics, and beliefs interact? Social systems follow regularities which allow us to answer these questions using different mathematical approaches.
This book emphasises both theory and application. It systematically introduces mathematical approaches, such as evolutionary and spatial game theory, social network analysis, agent-based modelling, and chaos theory. It…
I’m a history professor at Western Washington University. I first got interested in understanding social movements, power, and political violence in the late 1990s and early ‘00s as a young anarchist. Later, while studying history in graduate school, I realized that much of what I thought I knew about the FBI, violence, and radical movements of the 1960s and ‘70s was inaccurate. I don’t have any magic solutions to the problems facing humanity, but I believe that studying history—including the history of political violence—can help us better understand our present moment and how we might build a more just and peaceful world.
The field of terrorism research is dominated overwhelmingly by social scientists. However, Richard English has established himself as a leader in the historicalstudy 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.
Terrorism is one of the most significant security threats that we face in the twenty-first century. Not surprisingly, there is now a plethora of books on the subject, offering definitions of what terrorism is and proffering advice on what causes it and how states should react to it.
But one of the most important questions about terrorism has, until now, been left remarkably under-scrutinized: does it work? Richard English now brings thirty years of professional expertise studying terrorism to the task of answering this complex-and controversial - question.
Focussing principally on four of the most significant terrorist organizations of the…
I’ve been fascinated by fairytales since I was a little girl, watching Disney movies with my grandparents. As I grew older, I read fairy tales almost insatiably and was also drawn to mythology and folklore of every variety. When I discovered the fantasy genre, in my early teens, it was like coming home…a genre that combined all of the elements I’d grown up devouring: fairytales, mythology, and folklore. My love of fantasy developed my love of portal fantasy—the idea that other realms, other worlds, other dimensions exist, and we can travel between or to them. I wrote my first portal fantasy novel at eighteen and have continued writing fantasy and portal fantasy novels ever since.
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.
Ted Dekker’s bestselling and most beloved series—together in one volume. It’s an epic tale of evil and rescue, betrayal and love, and a terrorist threat unlike anything the human race has ever known.
Thomas Hunter is an unlikely hero who finds himself pulled between two worlds. In our reality, he works in a coffeehouse. In the other, he becomes a battle-scarred general leading a band of warriors known as the Circle.
Every time he falls asleep in one reality, he wakes in the other—and both worlds are facing catastrophic disaster. In one world, Thomas must race to outwit sadistic terrorists…
I am an emeritus professor of Russian and modern European history with twenty-five years of teaching and research experience, and I’ve been teaching the history of terrorism for almost that long. I am drawn to the field because it gives me a prism through which to explore nearly every topic in modern history that I’m passionate about: violence, extremism, the growth of the state, the proliferation of modern ideologies, and so on. In fact, I could teach most of my courses, including the survey of European history, almost entirely through the lens of terrorism, which is a sobering thought!
I have taught the history of terrorism for over twenty years, and I think this is the single best introduction to terrorism available. When people ask me for one book to read on the subject, this is my obvious choice.
Hoffman is one of the most respected scholars of terrorism. In this book he includes a brief survey of the history of terrorism as a springboard to examining how it manifests in the world today. The writing is accessible, and the takeaways are clear.
Bruce Hoffman's Inside Terrorism has remained the seminal work for understanding the historical evolution of terrorism and the terrorist mind-set. In this revised third edition of his classic text, Hoffman analyzes the latest developments in global terrorism, offering insight into new adversaries, motivations, strategies, and tactics. He focuses on the rise of ISIS and the resilience of al-Qaeda; terrorist exploitation of the Internet and embrace of social media; radicalization of foreign fighters; and potential future trends, including the repercussions of a post-caliphate ISIS. Hoffman examines the demographics of contemporary terrorist leaders and recruits; the continued use of suicide bombers; and…
I’m a history professor at Western Washington University. I first got interested in understanding social movements, power, and political violence in the late 1990s and early ‘00s as a young anarchist. Later, while studying history in graduate school, I realized that much of what I thought I knew about the FBI, violence, and radical movements of the 1960s and ‘70s was inaccurate. I don’t have any magic solutions to the problems facing humanity, but I believe that studying history—including the history of political violence—can help us better understand our present moment and how we might build a more just and peaceful world.
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.
Since 9/11 we have been told that terrorists are pathological evildoers, beyond our comprehension. Before the 1970s, however, hijackings, assassinations, and other acts we now call 'terrorism' were considered the work of rational strategic actors. Disciplining Terror examines how political violence became 'terrorism', and how this transformation ultimately led to the current 'war on terror'. Drawing upon archival research and interviews with terrorism experts, Lisa Stampnitzky traces the political and academic struggles through which experts made terrorism, and terrorism made experts. She argues that the expert discourse on terrorism operates at the boundary - itself increasingly contested - between science…
I’m a history professor at Western Washington University. I first got interested in understanding social movements, power, and political violence in the late 1990s and early ‘00s as a young anarchist. Later, while studying history in graduate school, I realized that much of what I thought I knew about the FBI, violence, and radical movements of the 1960s and ‘70s was inaccurate. I don’t have any magic solutions to the problems facing humanity, but I believe that studying history—including the history of political violence—can help us better understand our present moment and how we might build a more just and peaceful world.
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.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, governments in North America and Western Europe faced a new transnational threat: militants who crossed borders with impunity to commit attacks. These violent actors cooperated in hijacking planes, taking hostages, and organizing assassinations, often in the name of national liberation movements from the decolonizing world. How did this form of political violence become what we know today as "international terrorism"-lacking in legitimacy and categorized first and foremost as a crime?
To Deter and Punish examines why and how the United States and its Western European allies came to treat nonstate "terrorists" as a…
I am an emeritus professor of Russian and modern European history with twenty-five years of teaching and research experience, and I’ve been teaching the history of terrorism for almost that long. I am drawn to the field because it gives me a prism through which to explore nearly every topic in modern history that I’m passionate about: violence, extremism, the growth of the state, the proliferation of modern ideologies, and so on. In fact, I could teach most of my courses, including the survey of European history, almost entirely through the lens of terrorism, which is a sobering thought!
I return over and over to Zulaika and Douglass’ book as the most important and valuable text in the field that has come to be called critical terrorism studies. They ask a simple question: How can terrorism, something that kills relatively so few Americans–less in a typical year than are killed by lightning or choke to death on dinner–come to be seen as a fundamental threat to the very foundation of our life?
They weave an answer out of history, media studies, and sociology that is jargon-free enough to be accessible to an educated reader but sophisticated enough to get you rethinking everything you thought you knew about terrorism. That’s what it did for me.
Terror and Taboo is about the mythology of terrorism; it is an exploration of the ways we talk about terrorism. It offers incontestable evidence to support the idea that we give power to terrorism by the way we write and talk about it. According to Zulaika and Douglass, we make terrorism worse by the way we represent it in the media and in everyday conversation. Through their examination of terrorism, they propose to remove the taboos surrounding terrorism. Terror and Taboo is full of examples to ground the authors premise, ranging from specific examples, such as tendency to talk more…
