Awards

• Winner of The Richard Neustadt Book Prize 2025

Overview

Full Product Details

9781399519502

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is the first book to focus specifically on assassination as a tool of US foreign policy. The book systematically investigates US involvement in political killings around the world, from Patrice Lumumba to Qassem Soleimani. The book is well-documented and meticulously researched, important when dealing with such an emotive and explosive subject. In spite the topic's notorious opacity, Trenta has been able to bring together a wealth of archival documents and interviews, acknowledging and plugging gaps.--Committee ""Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize"" The book's outstanding documentary evidence base and its sophisticated judgements make it an excellent resource for scholars and students. Trenta takes a topic that often attracts caricature and conspiracy outside academia and conveys the complexity of policy-making and implementation. The book is a model of critical scholarship that is ideal for teaching about the unexceptional side of American foreign policy.--Maria Ryan, University of Nottingham ""International Affairs"" This is a well-researched, timely, and valuable study of the United States' use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy.--L. M. Lees, emerita, Old Dominion University ""CHOICE"" Combining forensic research with nuanced, sophisticated judgment, Luca Trenta has produced the definitive account of arguably the most controversial issue in modern US foreign relations, one that will be welcomed by scholars and general readers alike. --Hugh Wilford, California State University, Long Beach This breathtaking study of a controversial aspect of United States relations to the global south traces the rise, fall, and rise of assassination of foreign leaders. At the centre of the story is the 1970s ban on the technique as an obstacle circumvented with help from legal rationalization. Careful and scholarly, Trenta's book is a model of devastating and enlightening inquiry. --Samuel Moyn, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War This is a fascinating, well-written, and deeply researched book on murder as a method of U.S. foreign policy since 1945. Examining cases from Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in the early Cold War to Qassem Soleimani of Iran in recent years, Professor Trenta is fair-minded and thoughtful in his analysis of this extreme - and misguided - form of covert action occasionally adopted in America's approach to world affairs. --Loch Johnson, University of Georgia

The book's outstanding documentary evidence base and its sophisticated judgements make it an excellent resource for scholars and students. Trenta takes a topic that often attracts caricature and conspiracy outside academia and conveys the complexity of policy-making and implementation. The book is a model of critical scholarship that is ideal for teaching about the unexceptional side of American foreign policy.--Maria Ryan, University of Nottingham ""International Affairs"" This is a well-researched, timely, and valuable study of the United States' use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy.--L. M. Lees, emerita, Old Dominion University ""CHOICE"" Combining forensic research with nuanced, sophisticated judgment, Luca Trenta has produced the definitive account of arguably the most controversial issue in modern US foreign relations, one that will be welcomed by scholars and general readers alike. --Hugh Wilford, California State University, Long Beach This breathtaking study of a controversial aspect of United States relations to the global south traces the rise, fall, and rise of assassination of foreign leaders. At the centre of the story is the 1970s ban on the technique as an obstacle circumvented with help from legal rationalization. Careful and scholarly, Trenta's book is a model of devastating and enlightening inquiry. --Samuel Moyn, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War This is a fascinating, well-written, and deeply researched book on murder as a method of U.S. foreign policy since 1945. Examining cases from Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in the early Cold War to Qassem Soleimani of Iran in recent years, Professor Trenta is fair-minded and thoughtful in his analysis of this extreme - and misguided - form of covert action occasionally adopted in America's approach to world affairs. --Loch Johnson, University of Georgia

Author Information

Luca Trenta is Associate Professor in International Relations at Swansea University.

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