The 9/11 Wars

From the author of Al-Qaeda, Jason Burke's The 9/11 Wars is an essential book for understanding the dangerous and unstable world of the twenty-first century. 
 
 On September 11th 2001, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks, terrorists destroyed New York's World Trade Center and a substantial portion of the Pentagon. Since the Twin Towers fell, the world has seen the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the downfall of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, bombings, battles and riots. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the 'war on terror'. 
 
 Whether reporting on the riots in France or the attack on Mumbai, suicide bombers in Iraq or British troops fighting in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, Jason Burke's The 9/11 Wars, named 2011 Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph, Economist and Independent, tells the story of a world that changed forever when the hijacked planes flew out of the brilliant blue sky above Manhattan on September 11th. 
 
 'The best overview of the 9/11 decade so far in print' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Economist 
 
 'A magisterial history of the last decade' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Pankaj Mishra, Guardian 
 
 'At a time when there are more books out on terrorism than ever before ... this is likely to be among the best' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Potent ... journalism of a high order ... essential for understanding the past decade' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sherard Cowper-Coles, Sunday Times 
 
 Jason Burke is the South Asia correspondent for the Guardian. He has reported around the world for both the Guardian and the Observer. He is the author of two other widely praised books, both published by Penguin: Al-Qaeda and On the Road to Kandahar. He lives in New Delhi.

The best overview of the 9/11 decade so far in print

A magisterial history of the last decade ... The long patient sentences of The 9/11 Wars are suffused with the melancholy of a man who has learned a great deal from long exposure to atrocity and folly

A comprehensive summing up of the past decade's violent events ... The 9/11 Wars warrants great respect

Pacy, well-researched, and packed with telling anecdotes, this book's strength is in its detailed, balanced overview ... At a time when there are more books out on terrorism than ever before ... this is likely to be among the best

[Burke] is one of the most respected and experienced foreign correspondents in the business ... A major authority on the politics and organisation of Islamic extremism and ... a talented writer with the rare gift of joining effortless prose to challenging scholarship ... [The 9/11 Wars] is a magnificent achievement

A reader wanting a more dispassionate survey of how 9/11, and the response to it, may have shaped parts of the world will do no better than invest in [this] brilliant book

This remarkably balanced, well-sourced and very well-written book ... will be turned to in the future ... [Burke] has demonstrated impressive expertise as a historian who has had the advantage of having been present on many of the battlefields he describes

[A] lucid, sane account ... taut, careful reporting ... Remarkable

Making sense of the aftermath of 9/11 ... is a monumental task - but Burke is up to the job. The 9/11 Wars is insightful, thorough, and at times fascinating

Potent ... journalism of a high order. Like all good reporters, Burke is something of a scholar, drawing meticulously on interview notes years old, and on extensive background reading. He excels, too, in describing the experiences of ordinary Muslims; such insights make this book essential for understanding the past decade

Jason Burke is the South Asia correspondent for the Guardian. He has reported around the world for both the Guardian and the Observer. He is the author of two other widely praised books, both published by Penguin: Al-Qaeda and On the Road to Kandahar. He lives in New Delhi.

Travels through conflict in the Islamic world

On the Road to Kandahar

'I have drunk beer with Iraqi poets and whisky with Indian bankers, Mecca Cola with Kashmiri militants and tea with (aspirant or failed) suicide bombers ... "Islam", I came to realize, is a label that can be applied to many things and adequately describes none of them.'

From the bestselling author of Al-Qaeda, Jason Burke's On the Road to Kandahar reveals the true face of Islam in an age of global conflict. 
 
 In the summer of 1991 Jason Burke set off to join Kurdish guerillas fighting in Iraq. It was the start of a remarkable journey that would take him from the sands of the Sahara to the highest peaks of the Himalayas, revealing the true complexity and variety of the 'Islamic world'. 
 
 Describing encounters with hundreds of people ranging from destitute refugees to senior government ministers, from American snipers to hardened 'mujahideen', this extraordinary work of reportage is a vivid account of life and death, war and peace, bigotry and ignorance, hate and tolerance. 
 
 'Fast-paced ... fascinating' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sunday Times 
 
 'A personal odyssey shot through with vivid description and human sympathy' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;New Statesman 
 
 'A beautifully written account of a decade spent in Muslim societies ... intensely personal ... absorbing and illuminating' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Daily Mail 
 
 'Makes mainstream coverage seem like a caricature ... by refusing to generalize, this illuminating first-hand exploration ... makes it clear the subject is far more complex than most Western commentators like to make out' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Metro 
 
 Jason Burke is the South Asia correspondent for the Guardian. He has reported around the world for both the Guardian and the Observer. He is the author of two other widely praised books, both published by Penguin: Al-Qaeda and The 9/11 Wars. He lives in New Delhi.

Jason Burke is the prize-winning Chief Reporter for the Observer. He has covered the Middle East and Southwest Asia for a decade, and saw many of the key events described in this book at first hand. He is the author of Al-Qaeda (Penguin, 2004).

A brilliant, fearless journalist who knows huge areas of the Islamic world intimately, Burke now turns to the wider question of how we are to get to grips with radical Islam and what it really means. Burke has travelled all over the great arc of Islamic land, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and he uses this in his new book to great effect to show how various and completely unmonolithic Islam really is and how the sort of standard Western generalizations about it are both stupid and dangerous.

The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s

The Revolutionists

Jason Burke is a globally recognised expert on terrorism and has reported for two decades on this and related conflicts around the world for the Guardian. He is the best-selling, prize-winning author of four critically acclaimed books, including The New Threat from Islamic Militancy, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize; ; The 9/11 Wars, ‘the best overview of the 9/11 decade in print’ (Economist) and the ground-breaking Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam. He has made numerous appearances on television and radio and contributes to periodicals such as Foreign Policy, Prospect and the New Statesman.

In the 1970s, a network of radical extremists terrorised the West with plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Among them were the beautiful young Leila Khaled with her jewellery made from grenade rings, the hard-drinking philanderer Carlos the Jackal sporting shades and open-neck shirts, and the radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They sought to liberate the Palestinians and overthrow western imperialism, orchestrating spectacularly violent attacks that held governments to ransom and the world gripped to their television screens. 
 
Drawing on decades of research, declassified archive material and original interviews with witnesses and participants, Jason Burke provides a masterful account of their exploits over the course of this dark decade. From Dawson's Field and the Munich Olympics to the Iranian Embassy Siege in London and the Beirut bombings of the early 1980s, he takes us into the lives and minds of the perpetrators of these attacks, as well as the government agents who sought to thwart and assassinate them. In the process, he shows how the extreme fringe of a secular, leftist, revolutionary movement ultimately birthed something altogether different and far more lethal: the violent expression of a fanatically conservative religious zealotry. 
 
Gripping, globe-spanning and pulsing with drama, The Revolutionists is the definitive account of the decade when terrorism took to the skies and transformed the world.

Jason Burke

This is the book for which anyone bewildered by nature of Islamic militancy, and longing for a primer, has been waiting … this is history written directly from the front line ... If it is journalists who write the first draft of history, then historians of the early 21st century will be lucky in having Jason Burke as a source

Important and impressive ... the most accessible and up-to-date analysis of the development of Islamic militancy ... a clear and convincing account ... consistently fascinating

An excellent account ... The idea of home-grown extremism is not new. But Burke argues - convincingly - that its nature has changed

To understand Islamic State, there can be few better books to read … a magisterial account of the fast-changing world of Islamist militancy … a remarkably clear roadmap for understanding the seemingly chaotic world of contemporary jihad … Burke’s clear-eyed analysis, based on remarkably wide-ranging research, should be mandatory reading for anyone seeking to understand the globalisation of jihad and to avoid repeating past mistakes

A masterful exploration ... an essential and often gripping read

Professor Theo Farrell, Head of the Department of War Studies, Kings College London

One of the best reporters and analysts writing in the West about militant Islam analyses all the big questions

Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: the Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad

Compelling and meticulously researched

How much ought the West to fear the self-styled “caliphate”? Perhaps not as greatly as politicians make out, according to Jason Burke … comprehensive

Scrupulously researched ... compellingly told ... His analysis has the weight of considerable on-the-ground experience, rather than the lofty theorising of an armchair academic ... unpicks lazy, commonly held opinion

A major authority on the politics and organisation of Islamic extremism

Tells us with clarity and insight who Islamic extremists are, why they kill and what they are likely to do going forward … For all the horror, reading Burke is relatively reassuring. He shows that this clash of civilizations, along with the jihadis-are-everywhere posture, is terribly misleading … Thankfully, we have Burke to explain what’s really going on … Burke’s book carefully spells out with courageous modesty who civilization’s enemies really are, and shows us that we need not embrace their fanaticism and their barbarity to defeat them. It is a lesson some of our would-be leaders need to learn

A fascinating reminder of how the entire Asian militant factions came about… Well written, extremely factual, historically interesting.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016 
 
In The New Threat renowned expert and prize-winning reporter Jason Burke provides the clearest and most comprehensive guide to Islamic militancy today. 
 
From Syria to Somalia, from Libya to Indonesia, from Yemen to the capitals of Europe, Islamic militancy appears stronger, more widespread and more threatening than ever. ISIS and other groups, such as Boko Haram, together command significant military power, rule millions and control extensive territories. Elsewhere Al-Qaeda remains potent and is rapidly evolving. Factions and subsidiaries proliferate worldwide, and a new generation of Western Jihadists are emerging, joining conflicts abroad and attacking at home. Who are these groups and what do they actually want? What connects them and how do they differ? How are we to understand their tactics of online activism and grotesque violence? 
 
Drawing on almost two decades of frontline reporting as well as a vast range of sources, from intelligence officials to the militants themselves, renowned expert Jason Burke cuts through the mass of opinion and misinformation to explain dispassionately and with total clarity the nature of the threat we now face. He shows that Islamic militancy has changed dramatically in recent years. Far from being a ‘medieval’ throwback, it is modern, dynamic and resilient. Despite everything, it is entirely comprehensible. 
 
The New Threat is essential reading if we are to understand our fears rather than succumb to them, to act rationally and effectively, and to address successfully one of the most urgent problems of our time.

Jason Burke

Praise for The New Threat From Islamic Militancy

This is the book for which anyone bewildered by nature of Islamic militancy, and longing for a primer, has been waiting … this is history written directly from the front line ... If it is journalists who writ ...

Important and impressive ... the most accessible and up-to-date analysis of the development of Islamic militancy ... a clear and convincing account ... consistently fascinating

An excellent account ... The idea of home-grown extremism is not new. But Burke argues - convincingly - that its nature has changed

This is the book for which anyone bewildered by nature of Islamic militancy, and longing for a primer, has been waiting … this is history written directly from the front line ... If it is journalists who writ ...

Important and impressive ... the most accessible and up-to-date analysis of the development of Islamic militancy ... a clear and convincing account ... consistently fascinating

An excellent account ... The idea of home-grown extremism is not new. But Burke argues - convincingly - that its nature has changed

This is the book for which anyone bewildered by nature of Islamic militancy, and longing for a primer, has been waiting … this is history written directly from the front line ... If it is journalists who writ ...

Important and impressive ... the most accessible and up-to-date analysis of the development of Islamic militancy ... a clear and convincing account ... consistently fascinating

An excellent account ... The idea of home-grown extremism is not new. But Burke argues - convincingly - that its nature has changed

Books by Jason Burke

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