Customer Reviews

Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature

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This book is broken down into three parts.

Part one, of about 200 pages attempts to define a basic, universal theory of terrorism. It begins with an attempt to define just what terrorism is - no small as it seems every researcher has his own definition. From here it begins to break down terrorism into categories such as single individual, politically based, state supported. All of this is in an attempt to define a set of theories of terrorism. Such theories may well be necessary before combating terrorism becomes practical.

The second part of the book is a bibliography of terrorism. This lists some 6,000 books and articles that have been published on one aspect or another of terrorism.

The last part of the book is a 'directory' of terrorist organizations around the world. This list is much larger than expected. For instance it lists 39 organizations in Afghanistan, 107 in Lebanon, 90 in Italy, 140 in France, 66 in the United States. This list is very informative, but must be considered out of date as such organizations re-form, merge, go away constantly as new organizations are formed. At this stage, this list almost has to be considered mainly of historical value.

This is one of the first books to look at terrorism as a field of study in its own right. This particular edition of the book is reprinted from the second edition of 1988.

Academic gobbledygook, boring, dated, mind-numbingly complex and needlessly wishy-washy junk that falls into a trap most academics studying terrorism fall into, namely, a painful inability to define terrorism. It won't help anybody prevent terrorism. It is an attempt to turn terrorism into an abstract and rather arcane academic discipline. I think the authors have a vested interest in making this subject more complex than it deserves to be. It's proper form should really be an interactive database, not a book, since the information it tries to encompass will keep changing.

Sensible readers should avoid this book. Readers should heed the warning by professor Horowitz in his foreword: "Dr. Schmid and Drs. Jongman and their colleagues have made the task of researchers in this area both simpler and DEVASTATINGLY MORE COMPLEX." (capitals added for emphasis). Heed his warning.

I challenge the authors to debate the merits of my terrorism prevention strategy (below). My strategy defines and prevents terrorism. Theirs doesn't.

Thomas W. Sulcer

author of "Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism"

(google title + Sulcer)