Radicalization

by Kevin McDonald

From Paris to San Bernardino, Barcelona to Manchester, home-grown terrorism is among the most urgent challenges confronting Western nations. Attempts to understand jihadism have typically treated it as a form of political violence or religious conflict. However, the closer we get to the actual people involved in radicalization, the more problematic these explanations become. In this fascinating book, Kevin McDonald shows that the term radicalization unifies what are in fact very different experiences. These new violent actors, whether they travelled to Syria or killed at home, range from former drug dealers and gang members to students and professionals, mothers with young children and schoolgirls. This innovative book sets out to explore radicalization not as something done to people but as something produced by active participants, attempting to make sense of themselves and their world. In doing so, McDonald offers powerful portraits of the immersive worlds of social media so fundamental to present-day radicalization. Radicalization offers a bold new way of understanding the contemporary allure of jihad and, in the process, important directions in responding to it.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published December 3, 2018

About the author

I retired from the U.S. Army in 2008, after a 23-year career. I worked at two other jobs after retirement, but was laid off at the end of 2011. It was then that I inventoried my skill set to figure out what I was good at and really enjoyed doing. Writing had always come easy to me and I enjoyed it, but serious writing was always on the ‘someday’ list.

Someday came at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 when I figured out that writing is what I wanted to do. I started Echoes of Immortality in December 2011, and published it on September 25th, 2014. I also wrote a 100-page screenplay during Script Frenzy in April 2012, titled Echoes of Enchantment, which is the back-story for Echoes of Immortality, and will eventually be the second book in the series. Another day job found me in the spring of 2012, but I am plugging along and eventually plan to shed the daily grind in favor of the glamorous life of a full-time writer.