Critical Compendium » Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, by Michael Burleigh
Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, by Michael Burleigh

“Terrorist violence is often seen as violence for the sake of violence, death for the sake of perverse pleasure. Some of it no doubt is. In Michael Burleigh’s Blood and Rage, we meet many depraved killers. There is Sergei Nechaev, the 19th-century Russian nihilist, Carlos the Jackal, the loyalist Shankill Butchers. One of Burleigh’s aims is to strip terrorists of any spurious glamour that might be conferred on them by the other target of his book - the dangerously deluded liberal elite who apparently dominate the British media and politics - and in this he largely succeeds. Yet terrorists act for more complex motives than sadism or a love of violence. Burleigh calls terrorists ‘morally insane’ and believes that modern Islamic terrorism is ‘an existential threat to the whole of civilisation’. I am not sure that either statement is helpful in understanding such a difficult and often impenetrable phenomenon.” Read the review at the Guardian.

Filed under: History, Nonfiction, Politics | Posted 02.25.08 | Comments:


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An interview with Steve LeVine, author of The Oil and the Glory

"Big Oil is dying . . . The jury is out on whether the average consumer will be affected. The oil companies say with some justification that the state-owned companies don’t produce oil and natural gas as well as they – Big Oil – can. They say that means less and less supply – or at least not as much supply as might be expected – from these countries in the coming years. That’s important, especially since tight global supplies are one reason for $95-a-barrel oil right now." [ Read the rest of the interview ]



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