Making Sense of Suicide Missions

by Diego Gambetta

Overview

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

ISBN-13:	9780199276998
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/26/2005
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Nuffield College, Oxford

Table of Contents

Foreword1. Kamikaze 1943-45, Peter Hill2. Tamil Tigers 1987-2002, Stephen Hopgood3. Palestinians 1981-2003, Luca Ricolfi4. Al Quaeda, September 11, 2001, Stephen Holmes5. Dying Without Killing: Self-Immolations 1962-2002, Michael Biggs6. Killing Without Dying: The Absence of Suicide Missions, Stathis Kalyvas and Ignacio Sanchez Cuenca7. Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions, Jon Elster8. Can We Make Sense of Suicide Missions?, Diego Gambetta

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher