Paperback. White cover with black title.

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Please view our photographs and read the rubric on the rear cover. Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism by Franklin L. Ford is a comprehensive historical and psychological study of assassination. Rather than focusing strictly on isolated profiles, it investigates the structural motivations, systemic patterns, and whether political killings ever achieve their intended goals. 

The book is chronologically divided into three distinct chronological parts: 

• Part 1: The Lessons of Antiquity – Studies early historical and religious traditions, including the ancient Hebrews (e.g., Jael in the Book of Judges), ancient Greece, the Roman Empire (such as the Gracchi brothers and Julius Caesar), and non-Western cultures including early Asian civilizations and the historical “Assassins” sect.
• Part 2: The European Centuries – Traces developments through the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance “age of princes”, the rise of religious warfare alongside early concepts of state security, and the evolution of state-targeted violence into the 19th century. 
• Part 3: The Modern World – Analyzes modern political violence. It explores Weimar Germany’s rightist murder teams, the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang, World War II plots, and compares the environments of the American continent—ranging from Latin American regimes to the high-profile assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. 

Price

Because this text was printed in 1985 and 1987, it is out of print from the primary publisher, Harvard University Press (where its official list price sits at $52.00). 

Current secondary market pricing varies depending on the specific edition and condition:

• Used Paperback (ISBN 9780674686366): Typically available from independent bookstores or digital vintage markets like AbeBooks starting from roughly £14.00 for standard reading copies.