Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways

An incisive, prophetic look at our increasing reliance on preemptive action from profiling to preventive war.

Every so often, a startling book emerges that gives voice to a new or previously unexamined trend that is transforming society. Alan M. Dershowitz’s provocative new work, Preemption, is just such a book, chronicling a paradigm shift in our approach to controlling destructive conduct. As he reveals, we are movingwhether in society’s manner of fighting crime or in our response to terrorismtoward more preventive and proactive approaches and away from primary reliance on deterrent and reactive responses. Although the events of 9/11 have accelerated this revolutionary shift, Dershowitz compellingly documents that the seeds were planted much earlier. In this thought-provoking account, Dershowitz explores the historical origins of the change as well as its troubling implication for civil liberties, human rights, criminal justice, national security, and foreign policy.

About the series: Issues of Our Time 

“Aware of the competition for the attention of readers, W. W. Norton & Company and I have created the “Issues of Our Time” as a lucid series of highly readable books through which some of today’s most thoughtful intellectuals seek to challenge the general reader to reexamine received truths and grapple with powerful trends that are shaping the world in which we live. The series launches with Anthony Appiah, Alan Dershowitz, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen as the first of an illustrious group who will tackle some of the most plangent and central issues defining our society today through books that deal with such issues as sexual and racial identities, the economics of the developing world, and the concept of citizenship in a truly globalized twenty-first-century world culture. Above all else, these books are designed to be read and enjoyed.” — Henry Louis Gates Jr., W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University