A timely, engaging chronicle of the escalating violence that plagued the Middle East from the late 1960s through the early ’80s ... Burke conducted dozens of interviews over more than a decade, talking to hijackers, former Mossad officials and spies. Working in 12 languages, he also sifted through declassified government documents and thousands of media stories.He immerses readers in the era through short, telling biographical sketches, ranging from the founders of the murderous Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution ... Ultimately, the violence detailed in The Revolutionists stunted the aims of its perpetrators ... The struggle continues to evolve, but the profound sense of dislocation and disenfranchisement that so many in the Middle East feel seems never to be addressed.

No one knew what to call them. For some they were 'skyjackers', for others 'air bandits'. Neither name stuck, but by 1970, these figures were fixtures of the western political landscape. It helped that hijacking planes was easy. Bag checks, metal detectors and frisking at airports were proposed, only to be dismissed as overkill. The result was a lethal carnival of transnational terrorism that peaked in the 70s, when commandeering a plane was as much a rite of passage as backpacking to Kathmandu for some countercultural types. Spanning four continents and drawing on sources in a dozen languages, Jason Burke’s survey of this set combines a flair for period detail – sideburns and aviator shades, berets and Beretta pistols – with impressive digests of Arab and Iranian history ... Burke, the Guardian’s international security correspondent, writes with amused detachment, sketching militants less as ideologues than oddballs ... But there is a darker undertow ... If ideology sometimes recedes from these pages, it is because many of Burke’s antiheroes were functionally illiterate when it came to theory. What counted was the excitement of the escapade, not the utopia it was meant to bring about. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an interpretative thread running through the disparate material: the failure of the left, Burke argues, left a vacuum that was swiftly filled by Islamism.

There is a strikingly infamous cast list in Jason Burke’s fascinating new book ... The Revolutionists focuses on Europe and the Middle East during the years 1967–83, describing the activities of some of those who sought to change the world through political violence. There are two main centres of gravity: the radical, frequently leftist violence of transnational terrorists, and the revolutionary violence associated with Islamic extremism. Burke, international security correspondent for the Guardian, has reported thoughtfully on political violence for several decades. His previous books include his impressive The 9/11 Wars (2011). He therefore brings considerable experience to this detailed chronicle of hostage-taking, bombings, assassinations and other adventures. Full of vivid, intriguing detail, it draws on interviews conducted by the author as well as published and archival sources ... Though many of his characters have been villainized elsewhere, Burke treats them as complex human beings rather than caricatured monsters. But he does not avoid documenting some of the terrible effects experienced by victims of these people’s callous violence ... It would have been fascinating to hear Burke’s reflections on some of those revolutionists from these years whom he mentions only in passing, including the Basque separatist organization ETA and some of the US radical terrorists very active in his period ... But no book can cover everything, and Burke’s compellingly readable account already ranges widely.

Burke’s expansive history of leftist and Islamist political violence in Europe and the Middle East from the late 1960s to the early 1980s combines journalistic rigor with spy novel–esque skullduggery ... Though some readers may quibble about Burke’s geographical focus, which largely excludes concurrent revolutionary violence in Northern Ireland and Latin America, this is an intelligent and enlightening book. An authoritative epic about era-defining extremism.