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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 Revolutionaries is the definitive account of the decade when terrorism took to the skies and transformed the world.
About the author
JASON BURKE, the International Security correspondent for the Guardian, has been a foreign correspondent for almost 30 years, reporting from the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and Africa.
He is one of the foremost writers on terrorism and the author of four critically acclaimed books: 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’ (The Economist); the ground-breaking Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam and On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through Conflict in the Islamic World.
He lives near London.
Report
Brilliant, beautifully researched, observed and written. An astonishing window not just into the origins of modern terrorism but also into our own age Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge
