Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1. A Model of the Turn to Political Violence
Chapter 2. The French Revolution and the Emergence of Modern Political Violence
Chapter 3. Political Violence from the Restoration to the Paris Commune
Chapter 4. The Professionalization of Terroristic Violence in Russia
Chapter 5. Anarchism and the Expansion of Political Violence
Chapter 6. The Specialized Terrorist Organization: The PSR Combat Unit 1902-1908
Chapter 7. Banditry, the End of a World, and Indiscriminate Political Violence
Chapter 8. Policy Implications
Appendix. Testing the Social Identity Perspective Model of the Turn to Political Violence
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

Counterterrorism consultant Marc Sageman examines the history and theory of political violence in his comprehensive new book. Seeking patterns across numerous key case studies, Turning to Political Violence offers a paradigm-shifting perspective that yields stark new implications for the ways liberal democracies should respond to terrorism.

About the Author

Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist, is a government counterterrorism consultant. He is author of Misunderstanding Terrorism, Leaderless Jihad, and Understanding Terror Networks, all of which are available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Reviews

"This book by Marc Sageman is an excellent departure from so much of what has been written about terrorism over the last 15 years. . . . There is much that can be learnt from this book, and scholars, states and think-tanks would do well to reflect on its many wisdoms, especially if they genuinely wish to re-evaluate the last 15 years of failed policies."
*Critical Studies on Terrorism*

"The most sophisticated analysis of global jihadis yet published. . . . His conclusions have demolished much of the conventional wisdom about who joins jihadi groups."
*William Dalrymple, New York Review of Books*

"The best source of information about modern Islamic terrorists."
*Freeman Dyson, New York Review of Books*

"Sageman's incisive observations based on carefully examined evidence, astute insights, and scholarship make Leaderless Jihad the gold standard in Al Qaeda studies."
*Washington Times*

"Leaderless Jihad discredits conventional wisdom about terrorists by eschewing anecdotes and conjecture in favor of hard data and statistics."
*Time*

"It might be comforting to think that angry young Islamists are crazed psychopaths or sex-starved adolescents who have been brainwashed in malign madrassas. But Mr. Sageman . . . explodes each of these myths, and others besides, in an unsettling account of how Al Qaeda has evolved from the organisation headed by Osama bin Laden into an amorphous movement-a 'leaderless jihad.'"
*The Economist*