Iain Overton is the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence (AOAV). Prior to joining AOAV in 2013, he worked as a journalist, notably for
the BBC, ITN, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the
Guardian,
Telegraph, and
Independent newspapers. He is the recipient of two Amnesty Media Awards, a BAFTA, and a Peabody Award, among others. He holds two degrees from Cambridge University.
Overton is the author of
The Way of the Gun: A Bloody Journey into the World of Firearms and the newly released
The Price of Paradise: How the Suicide Bomber Shaped the Modern Age.
At the
Guardian he tagged
the best books to understand modern terrorism, including:
In the decade following the 11 September attacks, 1,742 books are estimated to have been written about that fateful New York day. But the sheer spread and number of Salafi-jihadist groups – who are responsible for more than 95% of modern day suicide bombings – has meant that many attempts to explain the rise of global terrorism have descended into exercises in book-keeping. You can’t go far wrong, though, with Jason Burke’s The New Threat from Islamic Militancy, a natural, albeit depressing, extension of his previous work The 9/11 Wars. Both books place the current globalisation of terror within wide political and social contexts.
Read about
another book on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
the BBC, ITN, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the Guardian, Telegraph, and Independent newspapers. He is the recipient of two Amnesty Media Awards, a BAFTA, and a Peabody Award, among others. He holds two degrees from Cambridge University.
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