Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla - Tapa dura

'This is a brilliant book by the most unfettered and analytically acute mind in the military intelligentsia. Kilcullen unflinchingly confronts the nightmare of endless warfare in the slums of the world.' - Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums 'David Kilcullen brilliantly illuminates a coming dystopian urban world, part Blade Runner and part Minority Report. He cogently argues that we must rapidly find a way to build our own security networks to prepare for the coming age of urban guerrillas. Out of the Mountains crystallizes this sadly probable future in vivid and practical terms.' - Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret), Former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and Dean, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University 'Drawing on a lifetime's practical and theoretical expertise in counter-insurgency and irregular warfare, David Kilcullen considers the security problems likely to be posed by the growth of litoral megacities where governments will find their authority challenged by a range of non-state armed groups. As this book eloquently argues, dealing with the insecurities that will inevitably arise from such situations will require militaries to adopt very different approaches and to work within a framework in which many different civilian skills are brought to bear. Anyone who has responsibilities for international security or who cares about the future of governance in an increasingly over-crowded and resource-stressed world needs to read this book.' - Nigel Inkster, former director of operations and intelligence for the British Secret Intelligence Service "There is no better guide to the future of warfare than David Kilcullen. Surveying the scene from Mumbai to Mogadishu, and Syria to San Pedro Sula, Kilcullen persuasively argues that conflict will increasingly be in "crowded, coastal, and connected cities." This is a gripping and essential read.' - Theo Farrell, Head of War Studies, King's College London

In his third book, David Kilcullen takes us out of the mountains: away from the remote, rural guerrilla warfare of Afghanistan, and into the marginalised slums and complex security threats of the world's coastal cities, where almost 75 per cent of us will be living by mid-century. Scrutinising major environmental trends - population growth, coastal urbanisation - and increasing digital connectivity he projects a future of feral cities, urban systems under stress, and increasing overlaps between crime and war, internal and external threats, and the real and virtual worlds. Informed by Kilcullen's own fieldwork in the Caribbean, Somalia, the Middle East and Afghanistan, and that of his field research teams in cities in Central America and Africa, Out of the Mountains presents detailed, on-the-ground accounts of the new faces of modern conflict - - from the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, to transnational drug networks, local street gangs, and the uprisings of the Arab Spring.