PROVOCATIVE READING: SEPTEMBER 2008

Michael Burleigh, BLOOD & RAGE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF TERRORISM

Basing his study on a wide range of sources and key players from the world of terrorism, Burleigh explains and defines the meaning of terrorism and marks its progression from its hard to trace beginnings to the modern–day.

He begins with the first modern terrorist groups: the Irish Republican Brotherhood — the precursors of the IRA — who played a key role in the formation of an Irish Republican ideology. He goes on to look at Tsarist Russia where the 'intelligentsia' launched attacks on organs of state, left-wing fighting against 'Fascism' and 'Nazism' in the 70's and 80's in western Germany and Italy, and Britain and Spain's long and drawn out battles with their own terrorist groups the IRA and ETA respectively. He ends with the first globally inclusive account of Islamist terrorism since 1980s till the present.

(HarperCollins; 320pp hardback; available August 2008; $49.99) MORE INFORMATION

Lee Siegel, AGAINST THE MACHINE: BEING HUMAN IN THE ERA OF THE ELECTRONIC MOB

Siegel argues that our ever-deepening immersion in life online doesn't just reshape the ordinary rhythms of our days; it also reshapes our minds and culture, in ways with which we haven't yet reckoned. Siegel's argument isn't a Luddite intervention against the Internet itself but rather a bracing appeal for us to contend with how it is transforming us all.

(Serpents Tail; 192pp paperback; available September 2008; $26.95) MORE INFORMATION

Barbara Ehrenreich, GOING TO EXTREMES: NOTES FROM A DIVIDED NATION

A fiercely sardonic collection of pieces exposing the growing divide in American society, by the author of the bestselling Nickel and Dimed. She sees America is a grotesquely polarised society and becoming more so all the time. The widening gap between rich and poor over the past eight years has left the country increasingly divided between gated communities on the one hand, and trailer parks and tenements on the other. The super-rich travel by private jet, while low-paid workers make multiple bus trips to get to their jobs. A wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, while the poor often go without basic healthcare for their children.

(Granta; 224pp hardcover; available September 2008; $26.95) MORE INFORMATION

Paul Ginsborg, DEMOCRACY (BIG IDEAS)

Political parties have lost swathes of members and effective power is ever more concentrated in the hands of their leaders. Behind these trends lie changing relationships between economics, the media and politics. Electoral spending has spiralled out of all control, with powerful economic interests exercising undue influence. The 'level playing field', on which democracy's contests have supposedly been fought, has become ever more sloping and uneven.

In many 'democratic' countries media coverage, especially that of television, is heavily biased. Electors become viewers and active participation gives way to mass passivity. Can things change?

By going back to the roots of democracy and examining the relationship between representative and participatory democracy, political historian Paul Ginsborg shows that they can and must. Paul Ginsborg is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Florence.

(Profile; 224pp hardcover; available September 2008; $32.95) MORE INFORMATION

*Information in this section is based on material provided by publishers.