The President's Kill List

This is a well-researched, timely, and valuable study of the United States' use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy.--L. M. Lees, emerita, Old Dominion University ""CHOICE"" Combining forensic research with nuanced, sophisticated judgment, Luca Trenta has produced the definitive account of arguably the most controversial issue in modern US foreign relations, one that will be welcomed by scholars and general readers alike. --Hugh Wilford, California State University, Long Beach This breathtaking study of a controversial aspect of United States relations to the global south traces the rise, fall, and rise of assassination of foreign leaders. At the centre of the story is the 1970s ban on the technique as an obstacle circumvented with help from legal rationalization. Careful and scholarly, Trenta's book is a model of devastating and enlightening inquiry. --Samuel Moyn, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War This is a fascinating, well-written, and deeply researched book on murder as a method of U.S. foreign policy since 1945. Examining cases from Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in the early Cold War to Qassem Soleimani of Iran in recent years, Professor Trenta is fair-minded and thoughtful in his analysis of this extreme - and misguided - form of covert action occasionally adopted in America's approach to world affairs. --Loch Johnson, University of Georgia