52 books like To Deter and Punish

Anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani wrote Good Muslim, Bad Muslim shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The book is a rebuttal of the U.S. government’s justifications for the War on Terror and military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which relied heavily on the inaccurate notion that terrorism is a product of anti-modern passions embedded in Islamic culture. Mamdani uses history as a corrective, illustrating how such “culture talk” has deep roots in European imperialism, and how a violent strand of political Islam emerged from modern anticolonial movements in the Middle East and gained global influence amid U.S. covert military operations in the second half of the Cold War, particularly in Afghanistan. I learn something new every time I reread this fantastic book for my U.S. and International Terrorism history course. 

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.

Prior to this book, most works on the long history of terrorism applied contemporary definitions of the term to various incidents throughout world history. Wilson turned the page on this framework. Killing Strangers analyzes the gamut of political violence in Western Europe and North America since the late eighteenth century to explain how we’ve arrived at a contemporary reality characterized, in part, by recurring fear of impersonal atrocities carried out in public gathering spaces. Wilson shows how, on one hand, the rise of the modern bureaucratic state’s “monopoly” on legitimate force pushed most violent challengers to the fringes of society. On the other hand, various technological innovations—from dynamite and automobiles to commercial airlines and satellite television—offered new possibilities for those intent on violent havoc. 

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.

This is another book of heart-pounding excitement from first page to last. Lex Harper is an assassin used by the British government’s shady department called The Pool, which has the remit to work in unconventional ways to achieve its goals.

The main storyline relates to a rogue soldier who persuades ISIS to support his desire to launch an attack on British soil. When The Pool learns what is happening, they hire Harper to neutralise him.

I wouldn’t rank it as highly as my other favourite picks because I found a few parts of the plot rather unrealistic, but the never-ending action and excitement dragged me through the book at high speed, so I definitely still enjoyed it overall and award it a place among the others.

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.

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. 

If ever there was a book that cast a spell over me, it was Incendiary. The novel is written as a letter to Osama Bin Laden; the letter writer is a woman whose husband and son were killed in a terrorist attack. How male author Chris Cleave manages to speak in the voice of a heartbreakingly traumatized, possibly drunk woman is a true act of ventriloquism. I could imagine the whole thing performed on a black box stage as a monologue and it would be riveting. The heroine's rage is understandable throughout the course of the story. What is surprising is her grace, her sense of humor, even her tenderness toward the man who destroyed her family. At one point she urges him to "stop making boy-shaped holes in the world."

I had the opportunity to listen to Karin Slaughter speak at the Bouchercon Conference in St. Pete, Florida and this was her new release.

The book sounded wonderful, and my signed copy is on my keeper shelf. Pieces of Her has a crazy, explosive opening and breakneck pace with questions that pile on questions, and we hold on for dear life. I was so enthralled by this story that I bought a second copy for a friend and put it in her hands saying, “You have to read this.” She loved it and so did Netflix because it is now a series. 

I found Black List to be a murder mystery that captivated me from beginning to end. The plot twists kept me guessing as to the final outcome, and just when I thought I had it figured out, the book took another turn and drew me deeper into the plot. This page-turning thriller pits Scot Harvath, a counterterrorism agent, against a secret government deep-state conspiracy that wants him dead. They’ve placed him on the ‘black list,’ a list of most wanted terrorists. I found this book to be a high-octane thriller, and one of the best mystery novels I’ve ever read.