'Written with Burleigh's characteristic brio, with pithy summaries
of historical moments (he is brilliant on the Americans in Vietnam,
for example) and full of surprising vignettes' - The Times 'Book of
the Week' 'Brilliant and timely . . . Our world today is as
dangerous and mixed-up as it has ever been. Luckily we have Michael
Burleigh to help us make sense of it.' - Mail on Sunday The
traditional image of a political assassin is a lone wolf with a
rifle, aimed squarely at the head of those they wish to kill. But
while there has been enormous speculation on what lay behind
notorious individual political assassinations - from Julius Caesar
to John F. Kennedy - the phenomenon itself has scarcely been
examined as a special category of political violence, one not
motivated by personal gain or vengeance. Now, in Day of the
Assassins, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh explores the many
facets of political assassination, explaining why it is more
frequent in certain types of society than others and asking if
assassination can either bring about change or prevent it, and
whether, like a contagious disease, political murder can be
catching. Focusing chiefly on the last century and a half, Burleigh
takes readers around the world, from Europe, Russia, Israel and the
United States to the Congo, India, Iran, Laos, Rwanda, South Africa
and Vietnam. And, as we travel, we revisit notable assassinations,
among them Leon Trotsky, Hendrik Verwoerd, Juvenal Habyarimana,
Indira Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin and Jamal Khashoggi. Throughout, the
assassins themselves are at the centre of the narrative, whether
they were cool, well-trained professional killers, like the agents
of the NKVD or the KGB - or, indeed, the CIA - or men motivated by
the politicization of their private miseries, like Gavrilo Princip
or Lee Harvey Oswald. Even some of those who were demonstrably mad
had method in their madness and acted for comprehensible political
motives. Combining human drama, questions of political morality and
the sheer randomness of events, Day of the Assassins is a riveting
insight into the politics of violence.
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