Highly recommended ... the book challenges conventional thinking about how modernizing societies can work toward more inclusive and democratic societies. It belongs in all libraries with extensive Latin American holdings.

Choice

Gledhill shows that behind the discourses of "war" against drug traffickers hides a war against the poor. He brilliantly articulates two new ethnographies of Mexico and Brazil, providing insight into the trans-nationalization of criminal networks in the Americas.

Alejandro Isla, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences , Argentina

Drawing on decades of field research in Mexico and Brazil, Gledhill pries apart recent processes of "securitization" from the ostensibly similar notion of human security. Equal parts searing critique and sensible call to action, this book speaks truth to powerful actors.

Charles R. Hale, University of Texas at Austin

Sweeping and compelling, John Gledhill takes us inside the wars that states wage on inconvenient populations. The result is a powerful critique of contemporary global capitalism.

Daniel Goldstein, author of Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City

A powerful analysis that uncovers the relationship between securitization, neoliberal views of development, and repressive intervention. The book will interest – and inspire – a wide readership concerned with suffering and inequality.

Dimitrios Theodossopoulos, University of Kent

Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork, and with a passionate sense of justice, Gledhill shows how contemporary news stories on Latin America – violent drug trafficking, dramatic electoral battles, and the excitement of emerging markets – are best viewed as scenes in a broader canvas of predation, which in recent years has rendered a bitter irony: that security policy is tending to undermine the security of many Latin Americans, and especially the most vulnerable.

Trevor Stack, University of Aberdeen