Audiobook6 hours
What Makes a Terrorist?: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (10th Anniversary Edition)
Written by Alan B. Krueger
Narrated by Jonathan Hogan
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Why we need to think more like economists to successfully combat terrorism If we are to correctly assess the root causes of terrorism and successfully address the threat, we must think more like economists do. This is the argument of Alan Krueger's What Makes a Terrorist, a book that explains why our tactics in the fight against terrorism must be based on more than anecdote, intuition, and speculation. Many popular ideas about terrorists and why they seek to harm us are fueled by falsehoods, misinformation, and fearmongering. Many believe that poverty and lack of education breed terrorism, despite the wealth of evidence showing that most terrorists come from middle-class, and often college-educated, backgrounds. Krueger closely examines the factors that motivate individuals to participate in terrorism, drawing inferences from terrorists' own backgrounds and the economic, social, religious, and political environments in the societies from which they come. He describes which countries are the most likely breeding grounds for terrorists, and which ones are most likely to be their targets. Krueger addresses the economic and psychological consequences of terrorism and puts the threat squarely into perspective, revealing how our nation's sizable economy is diverse and resilient enough to withstand the comparatively limited effects of most terrorist strikes. He also calls on the media to be more responsible in reporting on terrorism. Bringing needed clarity to one of the greatest challenges of our generation, this 10th anniversary edition of What Makes a Terrorist features a new introduction by the author that discusses the lessons learned in the past decade from the rise of ISIS and events like the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando, Florida. Author bio: Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Princeton University, former chairman of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, and an adviser to the National Counterterrorism Center. He is the coauthor of Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage (Princeton) and Inequality in America. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Editor's Note
In memoriam…
Economist Alan B. Krueger takes a data-driven approach to show how thinking like an economist can help fight terrorism. Krueger, who served as an aide to two presidents, died March 16 at the age of 58.
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Reviews for What Makes a Terrorist?
Rating: 4.124999875 out of 5 stars
4/5
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of the critical mistakes we can make in the current war on terror is to assume terrorists are poor, uneducated people duped or talked into doing the things they do. Krueger's work sets out to show in a statistical fashion who these people really are. In fact, his analysis shows that terrorists from a wide range of organizations tend to me middle class with higher education, and that our government, at least, has made a number of errors and deliberate misstatements about terrorists and what to do to prevent people from becoming terrorists. What Makes A Terrorist? is based on a set of lectures given by Krueger, and isn't as deep as I'd like, but it does offer a real statistical analysis of the situation. He's honest about the limitations of his data gathering, and his statistical analysis seems correct to me (although I'm an informed layman rather than an expert in statistical analysis). In addition, the transcribed lecture format seems terse. Nonetheless, it's a good book.