Terrorism Today: The Past, The Players, The Future, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: SHORT, BUT CONCISE CASE STUDIES
Review: I read this book for an International Studies class that I took in the Summer. It was a good book to start off with. It has case studies from all over the world and about the various different countries that have been or are still plagued with terrorism. I stress on the fact that this is a good starter - it gives the reader a brief overview on terrorism in these various nations, but does not go into great detail. Because it is so concise, it turned out to be a good course book for the class - since summer classes are a lot shorter than those during the regular school year. The book also gives the reader internet sites that keep up to date accounts of daily occurances in the world - this I thought was very useful since one of the things I learned was that terrorism is constantly changing. Hence it does not limit you to what happened in the past alone, but provides an opportunity for the reader to keep up. However, if your a news junkie like me, you probarbly keep up with the latest happening yourself.
I especially liked the books historical aspect on terrorism. Even though I keep up with news now, there are many conflicts which are longstanding ones which have a long history, and it was helpful to learn about the history of modern conflicts. I myself would never have read this book if I hadn't taken the class, but I'm glad I read it, for now I feel I have a better understanding about certain conflicts and issues that plague the world today.

Rating:
Summary: Homeland Security Threats Around the World
Review: I watch a lot of CNN and these days my copy of Terrorism Today is usually right there under the TV Guide.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the authors have been busy with media interviews and television appearances because they have 3 distinctive points-of-view on terrorism: the past, the players, and the future. And in his interviews, co-author Simonsen always emphasizes "the players."

This book is so comprehensive and well-written that it motivated a team of programmers (including myself) to contact the authors and come up with a news-gathering system that would facilitate continuing antiterrorism research.

As a result, each chapter of Terrorism Today now has its own daily newsfeed on the Net with up-to-the-minute features and news items relating specifically to the content of that chapter.

The book is geospatially organized, giving you an in-depth understanding of terrorism country-by-country. A global map interface online gives you instant access to terrorism news for the area you click. For example, the U.S. map allows you to click major U.S. cities to get the latest homeland security news or anthrax alerts for each city.

As a reader you get various Internet tools to merge and sort your own selection of headlines, add your comments, and thus create your own newsfeed. You can then either email your newsfeed to your colleagues or students, or publish it on your web site or in your online classroom. An editing tool allows you to go one more step and combine the newsfeeds from different contributors to create an annotated compilation.

This book has inspired an interesting experiment in scanning global news on a topic of great public concern. (...)

Rating:
Summary: Written by a third grader?
Review: This book is absolutely unreadable. The writing is hideous, many passages sounding as if they came from a third grade essay...where were the editors? Sentences such as "Independence from the Netherlands came in 1949, when Indonesia became legally independent from the Netherlands" abound, making what should have been a concise encyclopedia of world terrorism read like a murky soup of ill-defined acronyms and vague, unconnected references. Reading this book is like listening to the ravings of a mental patient. Please don't waste your time.