Book Review: Rut Diamint and Laura Tedesco, Latin America’s Leaders
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917712906 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsThe Americas |
Book Reviews 675
same arguments’, although this makes the epi-
logue feel quite rushed.
A useful resource for reading this book is
Geary’s annotated version of the original report,
published online in conjunction with The
Atlantic. This is a truly excellent feature and it
is a shame that this annotated version was not
included as an appendix. Geary’s Beyond Civil
Rights marks an important contribution to the
scholarly understanding of the evolution of lib-
eralism during and after the civil rights era. In
this concise yet thorough book, which is under-
pinned by impressive primary research, Geary
stakes a claim for the definitive account of
Moynihan’s elusory report.
Mitchell Robertson
(University of Oxford)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917717438
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Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism
by John Mueller and Mark G Stewart. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 391pp.,
£19.99 (h/b), ISBN 9780190237318
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney was a
firm advocate of American counterterrorism
measures after al-Qa’eda struck at the US in
2001, defending those measures with the claim
that thousands and eventually hundreds of thou-
sands of lives had been saved as a result of those
measures less than a decade after 9/11. John
Mueller and Mark G Stewart’s Chasing Ghosts
explores and evaluates the practice of US coun-
terterrorism within the United States, particu-
larly domestic policing measures of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National
Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). The book focuses
on terrorist actions that changed the world – so-
called ‘black swan’ events like 9/11 – and terror-
ists’ willingness to conduct similar acts. Such
events are seen as the driving force behind
present-day US counterterrorism policy.
The book is organised into nine chapters
including an Introduction and Conclusion. It
begins with a broad approach to terrorism in the
world today and how the general public per-
ceives and interacts with terrorism and terrorist
threats. Published in 2016, the book is a recent
addition to the vast body of literature on the
topic, and it contributes through compelling
qualitative and quantitative evaluations of
America’s approach to policing the persistent
problem. That threat is shown to be relatively
limited despite the impact of 9/11 and the perva-
siveness of the fear of future terrorist attacks.
The authors therefore evaluate the necessity of
counterterrorism spending, measures and efforts
in spite of terrorist capabilities to threaten the US
homeland, and present a portrait of what US
counterterrorism ought to look like today.
Provocative and ebulliently written, Chasing
Ghosts will spur the interest of anyone wanting
a nuanced picture of American counterterror
efforts at home, how US politicians have per-
ceived the threat since 9/11, and how the percep-
tion rather than the practice of terrorism has
influenced policy making for a long time. The
presidencies of George W Bush and Barack
Obama responded by spending massive sums of
money and encroaching on US civil liberties.
The book comes at a time when the US and
the world will be watching to see what direc-
tion counterterrorism efforts assume with
Donald J Trump in the White House. Mueller
and Stewart’s work will likely serve as the
basis for understanding how the US interacts
with terrorism, and for on-going research to
address the severity of the threat, and the
necessity and efficacy of American responses.
Scott Nicholas Romaniuk
(University of Trento)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917716096
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Latin America’s Leaders by Rut Diamint
and Laura Tedesco. London: Zed Books, 2015.
188pp., £14.99 (p/b), ISBN 9781783601028
‘History does not move forward in a straight line
but when skilled and determined leaders push, it
does move forward.’ Samuel Huntington’s famous
quote, with which this book begins (p. 1), reflects
quite well the motives underlying research in the
field of political leadership.
The authors start out by acknowledging the
significant rise in Latin America of powerful
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