Terrorism 101: A Library Reference & Selected Annotated Bibliography

Terrorism 101: A Library Reference & Selected Annotated Bibliography
Leon Newton, Ph.D.
Outskirts Press, Inc.
ISBN: 1-59800-611-8
Non-Fiction, Reference
Reviewed by Dave Thompson

The problem with writing about terrorism is, nobody has yet determined exactly what it is, or even who it’s exponents are. One man’s terrorist is, after all, another man’s freedom fighter and, though an utterly unemotional definition of the term would not allow that distinction to stand in its way.
Author Newton believes that “terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use, violence against civilians, in order to attain political aims.” But, of course, politics and policy-makers will never wholly get behind that, simply because it would not suit their own machinations to do so.
We are left, therefore, in a situation that is somewhat analogous to that facing the citizens of Airstrip One, in Orwell’s 1984. Terrorists in the modern world, like the foreign enemy in the novel, are whoever we are told they are, and all we can do is hope that the policy makers know what they’re talking about. But remember this, throughout the 1980s, Nelson Mandela’s ANC was regarded as a terrorist organization by much of the western world.
The whats, whos and even whys of all this are at the heart of this remarkable book, first via a series of very readable introductions to the nature of, and responses to terrorism, then through a lengthy (150 page) bibliography of the subject.
Author Newton, a Professor of Political Science at Jackson State University, intends the book as a library reference work and it certainly fulfills that function. His notes on every one of the books in the bibliography are at least cogent enough to let the student know if it’s a volume he should be investigating. But the first half of the book is crammed with sufficient insight and detail to stand as a primer in its own right, while his refusal to be drawn into underlining any single definition of his subject affords the reader a more open-minded view that many more conventional discussions.