Maybe this is just my personal interpretation, but I found this quite a controversial book, but given the subject matter that is probably unavoidable. What sort of feedback have you been receiving?
My aim was not to pursue controversy for the sake of it – a fairly puerile exercise, I feel. Nevertheless I wanted to critique some of the basic assumptions that surround the subject of terrorism, to break it into its component parts and see how it has been understood and created both its actual protagonists and its different audiences. In today’s hysterical climate, anyone who writes about terrorism with anything less than absolute horror and condemnation is bound to generate controversy from certain quarters. So a few rightwing reviews have leveled the ‘moral equivalence’ charge at me – a charge that I regard as ludicrous. But the general reaction has been positive on both sides of the Atlantic. There have been some excellent reviews. As far as sales are concerned, they haven’t been good over here for the simple reason that my book was sued by an extremely rich Saudi plutocrat within six weeks of being published. It was therefore pulped and has yet to reappear in the UK.
Because of the nature of the subject matter, was it hard to find a publisher? I must say that I have always held The New Press in high esteem for their willingness to run with controversy - this is certainly not the way that most of the larger houses work.
It was a little difficult. There are a lot of books written on terrorism by ‘terrorism experts’ or media pundits. I don’t fall into either category and I tend to wary of the terrorist expert as a type, so some publishers clearly wondered what my credentials were for writing a book like this. My position has always been that terrorism is not some arcane, mysterious subject whose inner workings are only available to the terrorism expert and the counterinsurgency specialist. It’s a subject that affects us all and that we all have the right to think about. Fortunately, I found a publisher over here that took the same view. And in The New Press I have been particularly fortunate. Not only have they supported the book from the outset, but they have given it a terrific cover and I’m proud to be published by them.
Article comments
1 - Amy K
Interesting book though one would wish to learn more about what is behind terrorism. Even today, things are still getting out of hands. Obviously, it has to do with wealth vs poverty on a global basis. Maybe knowing about global political and economic map is more meaningful. For this, I recommend another great book: China and the new world order: how entrepreneurship, globalization, and borderless business are reshaping China and the world, by a chinese journalist named george zhibin gu, which offers a more realistic picture about changing world politics and business.