Product Description

Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to Israel, few can doubt that they are a pervasive and terrifying feature of our political landscape. Based on a wealth of original information and research, and containing contributions from internationally distinguished scholars, Making Sense of Suicide Missions furthers our understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in radically new and unexpected ways.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1322518 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 388 pages

Review
"An enlightening collection of essays, so badly needed in the prevalent mood of misconceptions and half-baked analysis." -- The Guardian

"This is an important book, and the best treatment of the subject I've read." -- Financial Times

"This thoughtful and engrossing book underlines the pointlessness of a rage that is truly self-destructive..." -- The Evening Standard

Review

"The contributions are all of a high quality, asking searching questions of the available evidence."--Foreign Affairs
"Gambetta brings together a remarkable group of academics from different disciplines and countries who bring a formidable array of research and analysis to their attempt to make sense of suicide missions. This is an important book, and the best treatment of the subject I've read."--Louise Richardson, Financial Times
"Making Sense of Suicide Missions is an enlightening collection of essays, so badly needed in the prevalent mood of misconceptions and half-baked analysis."--The Guardian
"... in a fascinating contribution to the new essay collection Making Sense of Suicide Missions, the Yale political scientist Stathis Kalyvas and a Spanish colleague, Ignacio Sanchez Cuenca, point out that FARC, the Columbian rebel group, once hatched a plan to fly a plane into that country's presidential palace but could find no willing pilot, even after dangling an offer of $2 million for the pilot's family."--Boston Globe
"This thoughtful and engrossing book underlines the pointlessness of a rage that is truly self-destructive, even if we may have to continue looking warily on the Tube for a while."--The Evening Standard
"A stunning essay on al-Qaeda and 11 September 2001 ...challenging and timely book."--New Statesman
"The book effectively balances qualitative, quantitative, and analytic approaches. The case studies are deeply researched, riveting, and compelling. And each is shaped to engage the basic question: Why? To the degree that is possible, the attempts to answer this question are based on rigorous forms of inference and reasoning. The book is therefore a joy to teach from. It should claim the attention of both academics and policy makers."--Robert H. Bates, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Harvard University

About the Author
Diego Gambetta is a Professor of Sociology and Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

Customer Reviews

Sociological Analysis of the Suicide Attacker
If there is a single point that defines the current political struggles in the world it is the Suicide Mission. This book consists of essays from a number of social scientists from around the world who have studied such missions.

The book begins with a discussion of the Japanese Kamikaze in World War II where some 3,000 Japanese army and navy pilots died trying to crash their planes into Allied ships during the later phase of the war.

After this chapter the book covers the more recent activities from self-immolations, as with the monks in VietNam to the activities by Palestinians, Al-queda and others. Finally there are several chapters on the more general aspects of suicide missions such as motivations, beliefs, the overall impact and so on.

The hardcover version of this book was published in early 2005. For this paperback version an additional Epilogue has been added that analyzes what has happened in the world since then. As the business analysis types would say, this has been a growth industry with 555 attacks in 2005.