The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al-Qaeda
Written by Yaroslav Trofimov, the book “The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al-Qaeda” was published in 2007. Trofimov aptly describes an in-depth historical context of the socio-political and religious landscape of Saudi Arabia and details the seizure of the Grand Mosque which took place in 1979. The book is a must-read if you want a neutral detailed explanation of this unfortunate takeover with a fact-based backstory.
The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman
John Perkins’ The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman was published in 2004 as an unofficial sequel to Confessions of an Economic Hitman. It is a thought-provoking and eye-opening autobiography that shares the writer’s personal experience as an economic hitman. It provides an in-depth understanding of world politics and international financial system manipulations to propagate the Super Powers’ hegemony across the globe.
The book takes the readers through a journey, starting with the author’s childhood life, and how he grew into becoming an economic hitman during the ’70s and ’80s. Perkins later became a whistleblower, revealing the strategies used by the US and international organizations to lure underprivileged nations into debt traps to increase their influence across the globe.