Terrorism Today: The Past, the Players, the Future, Second Edition - By Clifford E. Simonsen, CPP, and Jeremy R. Spindlove published by Pearson Prentice Hall, www.prenhall.com, 446 pages. $51.
Like the first edition, this updated version explores various approaches to the study of terrorism and its impact on society. The authors make the point that terrorists have many faces - not just those of Osama bin Laden and his followers, but others such as the US citizens who opens fire in an abortion clinic. The authors devote a chapter to cataloging and differentiating various types of terrorism. - such as domestic, international, left-wing, right-wing, and special-interest - and tracing the issue's historical roots. The authors devote more than a page to Narodnaya Volya, a terrorist group active in Russia from 1871-1881 and bent on toppling the czars. The authors only cursorily discuss chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in a chapter on terrorism in the 21st century. They summarize two reports by the US General accounting Office, one from July 2000 and the other from February 2002.
Security Management -December 2004.
Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks. By Lovretta Napoleoni; published by Pluto Press; available from www.barnesandnoble.com; 304 pages. $18.75 - Reviewed by Mr. Mayer Nudell, CSP, USA
This book promised to offer revealing information on terrorist financial networks. Loretta Napoleoni uses her ostensible experience investigating terrorist financing as a springboard for her real agenda. She attempts "to show that, over the last 50 years, members of armed organizations have been hunted down like criminals at home by the same political forces that have fostered them abroad: the final aim being to serve the economic interests of the West and its allies..." She has reduced terrorism to simply a facet of what she sees as "a clash between two economic systems," reverting to the flawed Marxist view of politics that has long been discredited. She ultimately justifies the acts of terrorists on the basis of their being economically exploited.
