Drone

Gusterson makes it clear why we don't speak clearly about drones. Only by muddying the waters can we bear to acknowledge what we have invented: a new and oddly intimate way station in the mechanization of death.

Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, MIT; author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

Hugh Gusterson's Drone is the most intelligent analysis of drone warfare currently available—and the most probing critique of how the United States is using drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen.

Michael Walzer, author of Just and Unjust Wars

With his discerning anthropologist's eye, Hugh Gusterson has simultaneously produced both a wide-ranging and a focused study of the role of drones in current U.S. military policy. No relevant piece of evidence has escaped his attention, but he uses his sources economically to extract the most telling details. He concludes with a choice of dystopian (his word) and utopian (mine) drone futures that would convince me to bet—however reluctantly—on the former. Compellingly written throughout, Gusterson's book marks a major contribution to a crucial debate.

Matthew Evangelista, coeditor of The American Way of Bombing: Changing Ethical and Legal Norms, from Flying Fortresses to Drones

Among a blizzard of new books probing drone warfare, Hugh Gusterson's slim volume is among the most careful, concise and insightful.... Even anyone who thinks they know all there is to know about drone warfare will profit from Gusterson's rich and penetrating study.

Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture

[I]nsightful.

Publishers Weekly

In this excellent book, the anthropologist Hugh Gusterson argues that drones have fundamentally transformed the nature of war.

Prospect Magazine

[A] thoughtful examination of the dilemmas this new weapon poses.

Foreign Affairs