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Oliver Webb-Carter

Death to Order: A Conversation with Simon Ball

Death to Order: A Conversation with Simon Ball

Assassination rarely achieves its aims, the academic maintains, but it endures as a useful tool to shape behaviour the international stage.
Simon Ball

Hello Simon. Your book, Death to Order, suggests that assassination is as much about signalling as it is about elimination. How important is the message sent by a killing compared to the actual removal of a target? It depends on the kind of assassination campaign. The...

Death to Order: A Modern History of Assassination, by Simon Ball

Death to Order: A Modern History of Assassination, by Simon Ball

A survey of modern political assassinations that questions how far such killings have truly shaped historical outcomes.

On 28 June 1914, a collection of Bosnian terrorists gathered in Sarajevo to target the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Franz Ferdinand. It was a chaotic operation, with the first go not even attempted. A later grenade missed the Archduke’s motorcar and instead...