Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

This book is the worst textbook I have ever read. Most of the ideas are not clear, and the authors jumped from one topic to another and back again. They threw in references to things that most people probably can't recall and didn't bother to explain them.

The review questions for each chapter are fairly ridiculous. The answers may or may not be in the chapter, and they either ask something too obvious or something that really doesn't matter. And then at times it seems that the authors couldn't figure out what else to ask, so they asked the same thing and worded it differently. The best part is that the review questions aren't specific so when the authors were talking about one country out of ten they mentioned in the chapter, they say, "that region," and then let the reader figure out what they're talking about. It was also lovely to figure out what they're made up terms in the questions were talking about because they failed to mention them in the text.

The sad thing is that this is the second edition of this book. I really can't see why it got published again. Some topics refer to events as late as 2002, while other topics weren't updated so the authors talk about what might happen in 1998 or 1999. And maybe it's just me, but using the 1990 World Book Encyclopedia as a reference several times is somewhat disappointing.

The negative reviews for this book are not off-base; however they seem to apply to an earlier edition of the book. The 2nd edition of this book had a lot of flaws that the authors needed to fix. In particular, the oddest vocab words were selected for study, there were certain glaring omissions (such as a detailed discussion of the Iraq war, for a book published in 2004!), and very awkward writing.

I've gotten a chance to peruse the 3rd edition, and most of these mistakes are cleared up. The ridiculous end-chapter questions are gone, the vocab words make more sense, and their coverage has been extended in places, and mercifully reduced in other places (such as the countries that don't have any terrorist problems).

Their approach (in both books) has one huge strength: if you're looking for a terrorism text that covers the subject from a comparative politics perspective, the book is almost unique in this respect. It doesn't treat terrorism as something that's just a Middle East or Muslim thing, but covers terrorism on every corner of the globe. Granted, the Middle East should recieve a lot of coverage in the subject of terrorism, and Simonson and Spindlove don't skimp out. However, many other terrorism texts begin AND end with the Middle East, which in my opinion, is the wrong way to go.

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. (...)

This book was written like a history book of great quality, focusing on separate areas of the world at a time and chronologically covering all events since time immemorial till today. The information is interesting and can hold ones attention. Since the majority of the book is basically history, i would not recommend to those who hate history with a passion, but for those who love history or don't mind it, this is a great book and easy to red.

Received this bookpromptly, as advertised condition, and at a good price. Would highly recommend this Amazon vendor to other buyers!

Informative, but sorely needing some editing and certainly updating.
Distracted by too many spelling and grammatical errors.
Topics were carelessly composed and rambling. In light of today's world events; glaring omissions of factual content is evident.
Couldn't help feeling that the authors were rushing to get some details published as quickly as possible.
Examinations, and study questions, also seemed to overlook important facts, yet brought up some useless points that had little to do with the expressed purpose of the subject matter.
I can only give credit to the authors for attempting to outline an overwhelming historical source of evidence highlighting the facts dealing with the International world of Terrorism. I am looking forward to a serious effort in updating this textbook, and a better understanding of the historical significance (past and present) behind the problems facing all nations suffering from threats of terrorism.

I purchased this book as required for a graduate class. I found it to be rambling and filled with personal opinion and undocumented exposition. The authors appear to be very experienced, but used this forum to tell their own stories, rather than to provide a scholarly work that could be relied upon for accuracy and fact.

This textbook has the focus you expect from a high school research paper. The only difference is that the authors of Terrorism Today use elevated language and esoteric, arcane references, so uncovering any points in this book is extremely laborious at best. Most of it is nothing more than a series of polysyllabic ramblings. One of the most upsetting aspects of it is that the authors make outrageous claims about the motives and psyches of various groups, but they don't back up their claims, and they're obviously not psychologists. I generously gave it two stars because it does contain well hidden bits of information here and there; good luck finding them.

The Terrorism Today: The Past,The Players, The Future (3rd Edition) was a great buy for me. Due to taking classes on line my text books are usually e-books. I do not have the time to sit in front of a computer and due my reading assignments, so instead of printing out the chapters I save money by buying a hard text book from Amazon, I use it for my assignments and keep it for future referances.

This is a hard book text.It was easy enough to get through and very informative.