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Title: No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century by Walter Laqueur ISBN: 0-8264-1435-4 Publisher: Continuum Pub Group Pub. Date: June, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great detail but disorganized
Comment: For facts and details this book is a marvel. You will not only learn about the situation regarding terrorism in different parts of the world but about groups and splinter groups and how they differ on their philosophy toward terror. The author's knowledge of the field is truly encyclopedic. The book is not tightly organized and several times I wondered where the author was going with his line of thought and how, exactly, it tied in to the chapter title. Laqueur doesn't like to leave an issue without a thorough examination and more than once he would pull himself back to the topic after a discourse. I got the impression that this book may have been hurried to publication. However, his thought is so interesting that I was willing to hear him out. Loaded with details, this book might be a bit hard to digest for someone looking for a good, easily readable overview of the field and recent history of terrorism. A better book for that is Jonathan White's "Terrorism: An Introduction". I finished Laqueur's book thinking what a complicated and dangerous political situation exists in so many parts of the world and how "progress" is a fragile thing, mostly a matter of people having money and lots of goodies to spend it on instead of raging at each other. You don't get overly irritated with others if you have enough money to be preoccupied with your own comfort and possessions in a place of your own. Americans such as I are truly clueless about the depth of turmoil and resentment that roils the world. Laqueur lets us see how there are many fanatics that can loosely organize for a cause, and quite a few mentally disturbed individuals who have a cause all their own. Both the groups and the individuals are using more powerful means to terrorize. The future has always been unpredictable, but now it will be more explosive than ever.
Rating: 5
Summary: A must read for those determining U.S. foreign policy
Comment: Laqueur's book is an excellent source of background information for those interested in approaching the issue of terrorism as objectively as possible. For those lacking the time to read this work in its entirety, the conclusion is a must-read. It is hoped that Bush, Powell and Rice, and their advisors, have the opportunity to share Laqueur's views as they develop foreign policy for our nation.
Rating: 4
Summary: Scholarly Look at an Elusive Topic
Comment: Academicians still struggle to define terrorism even after more than a hundred years of case studies to draw upon. The main problem, Walter Laqueur contends, is that terrorism is always evolving outside of the conceptual frameworks developed for it. Where once terrorism was thought to be mainly targeted attacks on political targets for symbolic value to highlight a particular political problem, it now has changed to include mass attacks on civilians as a tactic in low-level guerrilla warfare.
While Laqueur's account focuses mainly on the present-day phenomenon of Islamist-inspired terrorism, it also spends time on other terror groups with other agendas, and it's always informed by the general history of terrorism. In his chapter on suicide, for example, he not only writes about the obvious acts like 9-11 and the Palestinian attacks on Israel, but also mentions the Japanese kamikaze attacks during WW2 and the European idea of noble sacrifice in the Middle Ages. Laqueur's purpose in providing this context is to show that while the potential devastation by terror attacks has increased, the essential motivations triggering them still have historical precedents.
This is not another book on terrorism by someone who discovered the subject only after the attacks on 9-11. Laqueur has been studying the issue for more than three decades and his bibliography reveals sources taken from at least six different languages, including Russian, German and Arabic. What mars an otherwise great book are the author's clunky style and his sometimes questionable use of historical examples that he compares to modern terrorism.
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Title: Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman ISBN: 0393057755 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Age of Sacred Terror : Radical Islam's War Against America by STEVEN SIMON, DAN BENJAMIN ISBN: 0812969847 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Terror in the Name of God : Why Religious Militants Kill by Jessica Stern ISBN: 006050532X Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 14 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0679642811 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind by Walter Reich, Walter Laqueur ISBN: 0943875897 Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Pr Pub. Date: December, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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