Customer Reviews

Terrorism: An Introduction, 2002 Update (Wadsworth Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Prior to Sept. 11, I took a college course on terrorism and this was the only text available at the time. It was accurate and informative then, and remains so today. Jonathan White is one of the foremost experts on terrorism and it's correlation to religion in the United States. If you are entering into the field of criminal justice or public policy, I highly recommend reading this book.

I recently took a class at my local community college and this book was the book assigned to the class. When I went into this class the only knowledge that I had was that of September 11 and the things that have happened since then. This book covers not only September 11 but the history of what lead up to Septmeber 11. Its a wonderful book, and recommend it to anyone who wants to understand terrorism in todays world.

This book goes through various forms of terrorism. It is much like, or is, a textbook. It is a bit challenging in that regard. It even goes into the very definition of what terrorism is and the different variations of it. I learned a lot!

This is the 5th year I have used this book for instruction, I am aware that there is a new version and I will probably move to it this next semester, But this book is very informative and works quite well in our Understanding and combatting terrorism course. For the price it works quite well for the students as a used book.

To give this book some credit, it seems to be written from a criminal justice perspective. However, I'm not sure it's the best approach. I found the book difficult to follow in terms of organization. It also has some factual inaccuracies - for example, White claims that the terrorist wing of Lebanese Hizballah was founded by Fathi al-Shiqaqi. Shiqaqi founded the Palestine Islamic Jihad, a completely different organization, a fact which is easily checked, but missed by the author and his editors. If you are looking for a good survey on terrorism, there are many better ones available.

In the fall of 2001, I was lucky enough to be taking a class at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI to satisfy a requirement for my B.S. in Criminal Justice. The class was CJ 405, titled "Terrorism", and was taught by Professor Jonathan R. White. The man is brilliant, had great stories about what services he performed for the U.S. government, and his book was, at the time, the highest circulated book on terrorism in the world. This is the book that we used, and it is absolutely the best book on terrorism I have ever read. I definitely recommend this to anyone who is seriously interested in the fighting of terrorism.

I found this book to be inaccurate in many ways. It was incredibly biased. ALF is labeled as an ecoterrorist, which they are not. ALF helps liberate animals from cruelty. Besides the fact that ALF was labeled as a terrorist, information given about them was severly wrong. It is stated that ALF incourages its members to wear leather gloves. That is completely false. Any animal rights advocate knows that leather is a dead animals skin, ALF members would not wear leather. I could go on all day.