The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s

“The book is about the links between Palestinian and Western European terrorism. So you get the Red Army Faction playing a role. But the real focus, I think, is on the various off-shoots of the PLO, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It’s looking at these groups, trying to understand their motivations and what they were doing…There are some very interesting characters along the way. For instance, Carlos the Jackal, who became a gun for hire. He was from a rich Venezuelan background, a very left-wing family, but by the end, he’d been corrupted by the violence and was doing it for money. So the East Germans, the Bulgarians, and the like might have hired him to do freelance terrorism jobs. These terrorists were some kind of idealists, but there’s a story of corruption there as well, which was interesting. There’s a bit of nuance.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books of 2025: The Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist

Robbie Millen, Journalist