Robert Taber – War of the Flea (1965)

“With the common people of the whole country mobilized, we shall create a vast sea of humanity and drown the enemy in it.”

Recommended: Yes. There are probably better books on guerrilla warfare now, but there’s something magical about a book written while there was still a glow of revolutionary romanticism attached to the idea, so that you almost find yourself agreeing when the author, (no revolutionary or extremist, just an excited reporter), starts talking about how humane terrorism is compared to normal warfare. It’s a book that presents the inevitability of guerrilla victory in such a way that almost any politically dissatisfied reader might go “hm, that’s interesting, perhaps I should give that a try”. It’s about guerrilla warfare, and brilliantly so – but also about how beautiful guerrilla warfare and terrorism, for a time, from a certain point of view, could be made to look.