Recommendations from our site
“This is the most historically far-reaching of all the books I’ve chosen, and raises interesting questions about the causes of assassination and the different attitudes surrounding it during different time periods and in different cultures. Although the book is organised chronologically, beginning with Classical Antiquity, and looking at notions of vengeance and judgment in the Bible, it continuously raises comparisons across time and place, whilst avoiding what the author describes as ‘laboured’ historical analogies. The result is always challenging and thought-provoking.” Read more...
The best books on Assassination
Lindsay Porter, Historian
In looking at the question of whether assassination can ever be justified, Ford offers a variation on Disraeli’s statement following the death of Abraham Lincoln that ‘assassination has never changed the history of the world’, by asking instead ‘how often in history have assassinations produced results even close to what their perpetrators were seeking to achieve’.