While events since the death of bin Laden have complicated the picture, this book serves as a useful starting point for...
The world’s leading scholars of terrorism investigate the organizational structures and operational links of Islamist terrorist movements around the globe.
The jihadist ecosystem since 9/11, write Hoffman (Security Studies/Georgetown Univ.; Inside Terrorism, 1998) and Reinares (Political Science and Security Studies/Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), has been a “a dynamically heterogeneous collection of both radicalized individuals and functioning terrorist organizations…but the al-Qaeda senior leadership nonetheless appeared to have had a direct hand in the most important and potentially high-payoff operations.” With contributions from 25 researchers, this richly annotated, scholarly compilation analyzes two dozen attacks and attempts in the West and the Muslim world, from highly successful bombings to plots derailed before they posed a major threat. In Europe, write Peter R. Neumann and Ryan Evans, there is “a milieu in which ostensibly nonviolent groups…provided entry points into organized jihadist structures…even if [al-Qaida’s] leadership played no active role in facilitating such links.” Meanwhile, in Australia, writes Sally Neighbour, “an independent cohort of Australian citizens, most of them locally born and raised, had formed a group of their own and conspired to launch an attack on Australian soil.” Even before the rise of ISIS, the situation in Iraq was most fluid and concerning; the local al-Qaida affiliate had a history of feuding with headquarters in Pakistan and was seen as “an ideologically incoherent and…operationally decentralized movement that is capable of plotting terrorist attacks but seems incapable of exerting significant command and control,” according to Mohammed M. Hafez. Throughout, the contributors stress the importance of identifying and eliminating al-Qaida’s “middle managers,” who motivate and finance otherwise isolated cells, and argue that when these vital connections are cut, the far-flung groups descend into confusion and infighting.
While events since the death of bin Laden have complicated the picture, this book serves as a useful starting point for readers who wish to understand how to unravel and defuse terrorist threats.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0231168984
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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