Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists

"Atran explores the way terrorists think of themselves and teaches us, at last, intelligent ways to think about terrorists." --Christopher Dickey, Newsweek Middle East Editor and author of Securing the City Talking to the Enemy by Scott Atran is an eye-opening and important book that offers readers a startling look deep inside terror groups. Based on the author's unprecedented access to and in-depth interviews with terrorists and jihadis--including Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Taliban extremists, as well as members of other radical Islamic terror organizations--Talking to the Enemy provides fresh insight and unexpected answers to why there are people in this world willing to kill and die for a cause. A riveting, compelling work in the tradition of The Looming Tower and Terror in the Name of God, Talking to the Enemy is required reading for anyone interested in making the world a safer, more secure place for everyone.

About the Author :
Scott Atran is a director of research in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France. He is also a research associate and visiting professor in psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan, a Presidential Scholar in sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and cofounder of ARTIS Research and Risk Modeling. His books include In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion.

Review :
"So how, [Atran] asks, is it that religious beliefs and practices are manifest, anywhere there are people, past or present? How could evolution have favoured wasteful investment in preposterous beliefs? ... Quite a project. He relies on a combination of the most recent human sciences. ... One of his exceptional talents is in weaving together a vast number of strands that most of us keep asunder." - London Review of Books "Atran's work is a brilliant exposition of the evolutionary by-product interpretation [of religion] as well as a mine of references for empirical research into the psychology of religion." - Pascal Boyer, Current Anthropology Praise for In Gods We Trust: "Scott Atran fell in love with anthropology in 1970 when he went to work with Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and found himself surrounded by a collection of thousands of skulls. He has spent the intervening years studying human cultures all over the world, dwelling among the secretive Druze sect in Israel, documenting conservation customs among the Maya of Guatemala, and analyzing the evolution of religion everywhere, a topic he explores in his book In Gods We Trust." - Discover magazine "With almost 1000 references and discussions of most of human history and culture, from Neanderthal burials to suicide-bombers in the Palestinian anti-colonialist struggle, this book is consciously and truly encyclopedic in scope, and shows both breadth and depth of scholarship...the reader finds himself constantly challenged and provoked into an intellectual ping-pong game as he follows the arguments and the huge body of findings marshaled to buttress them...Atran managed to combine the old and the new by relating the automatic cognitive operations to existential anxieties. This combination will be a benchmark and a challenge to students of religion in all disciplines." - Human Nature Review Praise for Cognitive Foundations of Natural History "Only Atran could have written a book that combines deep understanding of anthropology, biological systematics, the history of science, and philosophy. The result is a book that contains more substance per page than any book I have read in a generation." - David L. Hull, Northwestern University "Sets us and our governments straight about a long list of dubious assumptions. He is sure that we must talk before we shoot, and that we must learn to distinguish real threats from imagined ones." - Jeremy Harding, London Review of Books "Atran deploys his formidable knowledge . . . to dissect the various dynamics that have helped form human individuals into groups, warbands, hunting parties or armies over the millennia. . . . Even more impresssive is Atran's field research . . . research that underpins his vision of radical Islamic militancy as an adaptive social movement. . . . A very useful addition to other, more mainstream understandings of what 'al-Qaida' might be." - jason Burke, The Observer "What can be done to undo future jihadist networks? renowned anthropologist Scott Atran has carried out a very thorough study with surprising findings on what motivates those who kill and die." - Luis Miguel Ariza, El Pais "Atran has given us a remarkablly honest book, demonstrating that down-to-earth field work can give us a far superior understanding of what makes terrorists 'tick' than whole armies of armchair counterterroris 'experts.'" - Alex Schmid, Perspectives on Terrorism "Talking to the Enemy is about far more than violent extremism. One of the most penetrating works of social investigation to appear in many years, it offers a fresh and compelling perspective on human conflict. " - John Gray, Literary Review