General readers looking for a comprehensive guide to this serious global challenge will find this a rewarding, if sobering,...
A concise summary of the background and present state of Islamic militancy.
Guardian South Asian correspondent Burke (The 9/11 Wars, 2011, etc.) sets out to explain the history and theoretical underpinnings of insurgent Islam and to describe and evaluate the most prominent groups engaged in armed struggle. He succeeds admirably on both counts. The author’s more than 20 years' experience in reporting on Islamic militancy permits him to write with authority about the motivations, attitudes, and capabilities of the various militant groups. He rejects the belief that "Islamic militancy represents some kind of regressive historical riptide" and calls the "global war on terror" a "monumentally misconceived strategy which is in part to blame for the spread of radical Islamic militancy over the last decade." Burke traces today's Islamic militancy to a resurgence of Muslim faith identities in the 1970s and shows how Saudi oil money has been used to spread the intolerant Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam worldwide. He also ably sets out the evolution of militants' religious and political theories from the 1920s to the frightening current theory of "leaderless jihad." The author brings an unusual clarity to the discussion of this new movement and to his exposition of the theory and practice of Islamic militancy, including its creative uses of the Internet and social media to promote extremist ideologies. Burke clearly describes the differences between the aims and capabilities of al-Qaida and the Islamic State and of the growing number of independent actors disingenuously dismissed as "lone wolves" by security services. Western readers may take some scant comfort in the author's observation that while "the indirect impact of Islamic militancy on [Westerners'] lives is significant…the real impact of Islamic militancy will not be felt in the places where this book is likely to be read." Burke covers a lot of important ground in a compact narrative.
General readers looking for a comprehensive guide to this serious global challenge will find this a rewarding, if sobering, read.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62097-135-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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