Audrey Kurth Cronin has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Power to the People.
How Terrorism Ends
Summary
Amid the fear following 9/11 and other recent terror attacks, it is easy to forget the most important fact about terrorist campaigns: the always come to an end - and often far more quickly than expected. Contrary to what many assume, when it comes to dealing with terrorism, it may be more important to understand how it ends than how it begins. Only by understanding the common ways in which terrorist movements have died out or been eradicated in the past can we hope to figure out how to speed the decline of today's terrorist groups, while avoiding unnecessary fears and costly overreactions. In How Terrorism Ends, Audrey Kurth Cronin examines how terrorist campaigns have met their demise over the past two centuries, and applies these enduring lessons to outline a new strategy against al-Qaeda.This book answers questions such as: How long do terrorist campaigns last? When does targeting the leadership finish a group? When do negotiations come to an end? Under what conditions do groups transition to other forms of violence, such as insurgency or civil war? How and when do they succeed or fail, and then disappear? Examining a wide range of historical examples - including the anti-tsarist Narodnaya Volya, the Provisional IRA, Peru's Shining Path, Japan's Aum Shinrikyo, and various Palestinian groups - Cronin identifies the ways in which almost all terrorist groups die out, including decapitation (catching or killing the leader), negotiation, repression, and implosion. How Terrorism Ends is the only comprehensive book on its subject and a rarity among all the books on terrorism - at once practical, optimistic, rigorous, and historical.
©2009 Princeton University Press (P)2011 Redwood Audiobooks
Power to the People
Summary
Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. The diffusion of modern technology to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is an exacerbation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of advances in technologies combined with changes in who can use them. Indeed, accessible innovations in destructive force have long driven new patterns of political violence. When Nobel invented dynamite and Kalashnikov designed the AK-47, each inadvertently spurred terrorist and insurgent movements that killed millions and upended the international system. That history illuminates our own situation. The 21st century "sharing economy" has already disrupted every institution, including the armed forces. New "open" technologies are transforming access to the means of violence. Just as importantly, higher-order functions that previously had been exclusively under state military control-mass mobilization, force projection, and systems integration-are being harnessed by non-state actors. Cronin closes by focusing on how to respond so that we both preserve the benefits of emerging technologies yet reduce the risks.
©2020 Audrey Kurth Cronin (P)2020 Tantor