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 - and 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.Primarily, Burleigh aims to elucidate the mind-set
of people who use political violence and explore the background and the
milieu of the people involved. He makes clear that the west has
considerable resources to comprehend and combat terrorism - despite
consistently failing to do so - and highlights the shamefully inadequate
nature of US public diplomacy. The book also includes a number of practical
suggestions as to how terrorism can be combated both ideologically and
militarily.BLOOD AND RAGE is an unrivalled study that sheds an insightful
new light, and a refreshingly complex angle, on a plight that threatens to
affect the world at large for many years to come and establishes Michael
Burleigh as one of the most original, learned and important historians of
our time.