Terrorism Books - Page 2

The First Commandment

Brad Thor

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Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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A master assassin. A vendetta years in the making. And a counterterrorism operative who will risk everything -- even treason -- to keep the people he loves alive.

Six months ago: In the dead of night, five of the most dangerous detainees in the war on terror are pulled from their isolation cells in Guantanamo Bay, held at gunpoint, and told to strip off their orange jumpsuits. Issued civilian clothes and driven to the base airfield, they are loaded aboard a Boeing 727 and set free.

Present day: Covert counterterrorism agent Scot Harvath awakens to discover that his world has changed violently -- and forever. A sadistic assassin with a personal vendetta is wreaking havoc of biblical proportions. Unleashing nightmarish horrors on those closest to Harvath, the attacker thrusts everything Harvath holds dear -- including his life -- into absolute peril.

Ordered by the president to stay out of the investigation, Harvath is forced to mount his own operation to uncover the conspiracy and to exact revenge. When he discovers a connection between the attacks and a group of prisoners secretly released from Guantanamo, Harvath must ask himself previously unthinkable questions about the organizations and the nation he has spent his life serving.

A renegade from his own government, Harvath will place his life on the line as his search for the truth draws him into a showdown with one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth. Brad Thor roars through this nonstop adventure full of international intrigue, twisted betrayals, and ultimate revenge.

The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)

Lawrence Wright

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Total reviews: 289 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good intro to the topic 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Good intro into a more detailed study of radical Islamism. No overt bias. Virtually no discussion of the events leading up to the actual 9/11 attacks -- but a good overview of the rise of al Queda.

The book really makes al Queda and al Jihad seem like a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. One finishes it thinking they got "lucky" on 9/11 and wondering: how could America seriously feel threatened by this band of misfits? Perhaps that is a valuable lesson to be taken from this book, or perhaps the author is guilty of softselling the danger of this organization.

Editorial Review:

National Book Award Finalist

A Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

A gripping narrative that spans five decades, The Looming Tower explains in unprecedented detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Lawrence Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this new threat. Packed with new information and a deep historical perspective, The Looming Tower is the definitive history of the long road to September 11.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Sam Harris

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Total reviews: 837 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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An impassioned plea for reason in a world divided by faith.

This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes-heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion—an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.

Natalie Angier wrote in the New York Times: "The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated….Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

Ron Suskind

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Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today s shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.

In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of The Armageddon Test a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world s nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency.

While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate and often daring brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor s son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she s been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions human solutions to so much that has gone wrong.

For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope along with the moral clarity and earned optimism at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.

Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America

Brigitte Gabriel

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Total reviews: 348 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous."

--Publishers Weekly

“Brigitte Gabriel's words should be read, and studied carefully, by all the law enforcement and government officials of the West -- as well as by everyone who values freedom.”

-- Robert Spencer, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

Brigitte Gabriel lost her childhood to militant Islam, when militant Muslims from throughout the Middle East poured into Lebanon and declared jihad against the Lebanese Christians. Because They Hate warns that the US is threatened by fundamentalist Islamic theology in the same way Lebanon was— radical Islam will stop at nothing short of domination of all non-Muslim countries.

Fiercely articulate and passionately committed, Because They Hate tells Gabriel's personal story as well as outlines the history, social movements, and religious divisions that have led to this critical historical conflict.

BRIGITTE GABRIEL is a US-based journalist and news producer who started her career as an anchor for World News, an evening Arabic news program. As a terrorism expert and the founder of the nonprofit organization ACT! for America, Brigitte Gabriel travels widely and speaks regularly on topics related to the Middle East. She has addressed audiences at the FBI, the United States Special Operations Command, the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Joint Forces Staff College, among others.

Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas

John S. Burnett

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The romance of the high seas is gone 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The thrill of the high sea has new meaning today. The romance is gone and the adventure is more ominous. In Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas the author, John S. Burnett, has thrown a damper on what was once every boy's dream and every man's secret longing. In startling detail and tight-knit writing, Burnett has presented a new danger that is real, threatening, and not easily set aside by some sentimental vision of wind and water.

John S. Burnett and his family actually survived being attacked by pirates in the South China Sea south of Singapore. Knives and guns were brandished, money was demanded and, because he didn't have much money aboard, Burnett had his head gun-butted before the motley crew sailed away with a meager haul of a set of binoculars and some cigarettes. The incident prompted Burnett's interest and closer investigation of piracy.

Through research, interviews, and personal travel in some of the most set-upon waters in the world, the author has presented a riveting study of the fear of pirates felt by the crews of the ships who pass through every day - and night. One might wonder how a tanker that is larger than three football fields could be compromised by a ragtag crew of four or five hijackers but it happens regularly. Sometimes the crew members escape any real harm, sometimes they don't.

I always assumed that my friends Smith & Wesson could ward off trouble but ship owners are advised not to allow firearms on board. Cooperation and compliance with the terrorists' demands are believed to be a better way to escape harm. That may be true but entire crews still disappear and ships are turned into ghosts, never to be seen again. I understand the principle behind the no firearms policy, but it would take a steely will to face machetes, knives, attack rifles, and even rocket-propelled grenades, be shoved around and threatened, and then trust in the goodwill of the attackers to leave docilely after their mission is accomplished.

Some of the protection techniques outlined by John S. Burnett seem to be effective. The larger shipping companies have resorted to patrols, mercenary protection placed on board, negotiation, and even payoffs to the main forces behind the attacks. Ships no longer carry much money but now the cargoes themselves have become the targets. However, in spite of best efforts, piracy seems to be escalating. As Burnett points out, it's probable that some accident caused by piracy will cause a major environmental and economic disaster. We know that terrorists could intentionally cause enough damage to a Very Large Crude Container (VLCC) ship to spill nearly two million barrels of petroleum product into these vital waterways. But pirates could cause the same damage by taking over a ship and crew while allowing the tanker to continue out of control down a narrow, heavily trafficked corridor only to collide with another heavily loader tanker or to break up on the shoreline rocks.

Burnett leaves you with a lot to think about. There aren't any satisfactory answers as to how to handle the ever increasing threat. I strongly recommend this book as an early warning about a problem that must be solved.

Editorial Review:

While sailing alone one night in the shipping lanes across one of the busiest waterways in the world, John Burnett was attacked by pirates. Through sheer ingenuity and a little bit of luck, he survived, and his shocking firsthand experience became the inspiration for Dangerous Waters.

Today's breed of pirates are not the colorful cutthroats painted by the history books. Unlike the romantic images from yesteryear of Captain Hook, Long John Silver, and Blackbeard, modern pirates can be local seamen looking for a quick score, highly trained guerrillas, rogue military units, or former seafarers recruited by sophisticated crime organizations.

Including new, up-to-date information for the paperback edition, Dangerous Waters is both a dauntless investigation and an epic, breathtaking modern tale of the sea.

Scorpia (Alex Rider)

Anthony Horowitz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 108 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

GREAT BOOK!! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

i needed a bookk for reading class and i picked this one randomly because i like spy stuff. man was i surprised at how good this book turned out to be!the best part about this book is how things you dont expect happen so fast its like BANG!! throughout the whole book my mouth was dropped open by the thrilling detaial and action. i absolutly love this book and i am glad i took the cchance on buying it. by the way ive only read this book so far and no others in the alex rider series. i fully understood it without reading the others , if that helps anyone. oh and i am a girl so dont think this is just a boy book!

Editorial Review:

Alex Rider, teen spy, has always been told he is the spitting image of the father he never knew. But when he learns that his father may have been an assassin for the most lethal and powerful terrorist organization in the world, Scorpia, Alex's world shatters. Now Scorpia wants him on their side. And Alex no longer has the strength to fight them. Until, that is, he learns of Scorpia's latest plot: an operation known only as "Invisible Sword" that will result in the death of thousands of people. Can Alex prevent the slaughter, or will Scorpia prove once and for all that the terror will not be stopped?

American Pastoral (Unabridged)

Philip Roth

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Total reviews: 222 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Scrupulous Account of a Pivotal Point in America 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I recently finished an outstandingly beautiful novel (THE MASTER PLANETS), and immediately went into one of those "I'll-Never-Find-Anything-As-Good-Again" funks. Then I found this book, which is not only a brilliant piece of literature (it's by Roth, after all), but also deals with some fascinating issues similar to those in Planets--issues I wanted to read more about.

As just one example: I am not Jewish, but have noticed in certain writings something uniquely poignant in the Jewish love for America immediately after World War II. This was the country that had taken in many Jews' parents and grandparents in a way never before experienced, I believe. For the first time they were not outsiders, but simply immigrants in a land full of immigrants. And for the first time, every opportunity--in this nation of bounteous opportunities--was open to them. It is not surprising that the name "America" would become almost a hymn on the lips of many American Jews in this period, that they would develop an unparalleled love for their country. As all of America basked in a cornucopian economy and the righteous sense that our own good works had entitled us to it, American Jews were, perhaps, "Ultimate Americans." So it is also not surprising that, like everyone else, they also gave little thought to the idea that the richness of life here might be too well fed by our military industrial complex and exploitation of Third World nations.

The protagonist, Seymour "Swede" Levov, certainly does not think about these things, and therein lies his downfall. As Amazon reviewer Ian Muldoon (above) so aptly notes, the central question of the book is whether it is acceptable for Levov to to accept that he is one of the lucky ones and simply enjoy his place in time and history, or whether his good luck also carries an obligation. An inherently decent man, Levov does not look beyond his own life to wonder if it impinges on the lives of others. But his daughter cannot feel so sanguine. Merry has not had the good fortune of Seymour and his wife to be thought "perfect": She grew up with a terrible stutter, over which her beautiful parents agonized. Is this what gave her the ability (willingness? determination?) to see the fissures in the edifice they revere? In any event, she sees the fissures yawning, and her answer is to place sticks of dynamite in them -- and later to withdraw so far from the world that she scarcely eats so as not to "destroy plant life," and will not even wash for fear of "harming the water." She has started by demolishing the world around her, and is now obliterating herself. Miraculously, the stutter that at one time "terrified" Levov is gone... as she herself soon will be.

AMERICAN PASTORAL is the story of a beautiful nation that, about 40 years ago, let some part of its best self slip away. As the "Ultimate American," Levov is the perfect symbol. As he thinks, so thought we.

Editorial Review:

As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longer-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.

American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-making, and the Crime of the Century (Thorndike Large Print Crime Scene)

Howard Blum

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Total reviews: 80 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.

In American Lightning, acclaimed author Howard Blum masterfully evokes the incredible circumstances that led to the original “crime of the century”—and an aftermath more dramatic than even the crime itself.

With smoke still wafting up from the charred ruins, the city’s mayor reacts with undisguised excitement when he learns of the arrival, only that morning, of America’s greatest detective, William J. Burns, a former Secret Service man who has been likened to Sherlock Holmes. Surely Burns, already world famous for cracking unsolvable crimes and for his elaborate disguises, can run the perpetrators to ground.

Through the work of many months, snowbound stakeouts, and brilliant forensic sleuthing, the great investigator finally identifies the men he believes are responsible for so much destruction. Stunningly, Burns accuses the men—labor activists with an apparent grudge against the Los Angeles Times’s fiercely anti-union owner—of not just one heinous deed but of being part of a terror wave involving hundreds of bombings.

While preparation is laid for America’s highest profile trial ever—and the forces of labor and capital wage hand-to-hand combat in the streets—two other notable figures are swept into the drama: industry-shaping filmmaker D.W. Griffith, who perceives in these events the possibility of great art and who will go on to alchemize his observations into the landmark film The Birth of a Nation; and crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow, committed to lend his eloquence to the defendants, though he will be driven to thoughts of suicide before events have fully played out.

Simultaneously offering the absorbing reading experience of a can’t-put-it-down thriller and the perception-altering resonance of a story whose reverberations continue even today, American Lightning is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

Robert Baer

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Total reviews: 209 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his explosive New York Times bestseller, top CIA operative Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides startling evidence of how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA’s efforts to root out the world’s deadliest terrorists, allowing for the rise of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the continued entrenchment of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

A veteran case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in the Middle East, Baer witnessed the rise of terrorism first hand and the CIA’s inadequate response to it, leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001. This riveting book is both an indictment of an agency that lost its way and an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism, and includes a new afterword in which Baer speaks out about the American war on terrorism and its profound implications throughout the Middle East.

“Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field
officer in the Middle East.”
–Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

From The Preface
This book is a memoir of one foot soldier’s career in the other cold war, the one against terrorist networks. It’s a story about places most Americans will never travel to, about people many Americans would prefer to think we don’t need to do business with.

This memoir, I hope, will show the reader how spying is supposed to work, where the CIA lost its way, and how we can bring it back again. But I hope this book will accomplish one more purpose as well: I hope it will show why I am angry about what happened to the CIA. And I want to show why every American and everyone who cares about the preservation of this country should be angry and alarmed, too.

The CIA was systematically destroyed by political correctness, by petty Beltway wars, by careerism, and much more. At a time when terrorist threats were compounding globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being scrubbed clean instead. Americans were making too much money to bother. Life was good. The White House and the National Security Council became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed the interests of protecting American citizens at home and abroad. Defanged and dispirited, the CIA went along for the ride. And then on September 11, 2001, the reckoning for such vast carelessness was presented for all the world to see.