A tremendously useful, insightful study of the frightening spread of a culture of death.
An exploration of the spreading terror of the self-proclaimed new caliphate.
Senior BBC reporter Hosken, who has covered 9/11 and the Arab Spring, among other major world events, has been tracking the rise of the Islamic State since 2003, as it took root with the United States–led invasion of Iraq. There are enormously complicated yet logical steps to the terrorist organization’s horrifying rise, and the author does a thorough job of building the chronology. The first Jordanian leader of IS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was radicalized in prison by Islamist extremism and the idea of eradicating apostasy, in the form of anyone not subscribing to the narrow Salafist ideology—e.g., Shia Muslims, Yazidis, Christians, and many others. From 1996 to 2003, followers adhered to a specific blueprint and embraced a bloodthirsty campaign of purging Shia enemies (the majority in Iraq) and employing widespread terrorism, culminating in the declaration of a caliphate by 2014—embodied with the capture of Mosul. The U.S.’s disastrous decision to dissolve the Ba’ath Party led many embittered generals to join the insurgency. After al-Zarqawi’s death in June 2006, the next leader and future caliph of IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, followed the terror strategy laid out in a manual called The Management of Savagery: suicide bombs, massacres, beheadings, abduction and rapes of women and children, terrorizing the population of Anbar province. Al-Baghdadi made the crucial decision to enter the Syrian civil war in 2011, which gave the group deadly new impetus leading to the declaration of a caliphate. Hosken does an excellent job of sorting out the American reaction, the failure of the Iraqi leadership in the form of Nouri al-Maliki and others, and how IS has becomes the richest terrorist group in the world.
A tremendously useful, insightful study of the frightening spread of a culture of death.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78074-806-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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