summary - Veteran war correspondent Al Venter looks at the ample evidence that Islamic countries and al-Qaeda are seeking atomic weapons and are likely to use them. He reckons the likelihood of nuclear weapons use as high. Analytic Services senior editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime, Barry Kellman describes the underestimated danger of biological agents falling into the hands of those who would be inclined to use them, and provides a wide-ranging and detailed policy analysis on how to prevent this from happening.

summary - In The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, William Langewiesche describes how we are entering a “world in which many countries have acquired atomic bombs, and some may use them.” Poor countries, he says, “for a host of reasons, are more likely to use their nuclear weapons than the great powers have been … At the extreme is the possibility, entirely real, that one or two nuclear weapons will pass into the hands of the new stateless guerillas, the jihadists, who offer none of the retaliatory targets that have so far underlain the nuclear peace.” Langewiesche, however, gives solid reasons why acquiring a nuclear weapon or the means to manufacture one would be very difficult (though not impossible). Analytic Services senior editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Blackwater: The Rise of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Jeremy Scahill illuminates the reliance on “private contractors” as a main part of the Total Force during the Global War on Terror. In Iraq, a company called Blackwater is conducting missions that have been historically military-only missions, such as security and munitions training. Chris LeCron reviews the book.

summary - In Angels and Mobsters, Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe look at the relationships within the organized crime and terrorist underworlds. The authors examine criminal entities, terrorist groups, and particularly Canada''s approach to fighting crime and terrorism--an approach the authors find fault with. Joseph Wheatley reviews the book.

summary - In Curse of the Narrows, Laura M. Mac Donald has written a vivid piece of history describing the Halifax explosion of 1917 and its aftermath. (See the Homeland Security Newsletter Website of the Week for December 16, 2005.) Although the disaster occurred 90 years ago, the response to the catastrophe holds lessons for today. Analytic Services senior editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith, Vartan Gregorian introduces us to the facets of the Islamic mosaic, which has pieces throughout the world and is embodied in microcosm by the diverse Muslim communities in the United States. The Muslims he writes of are our fellow citizens, our world neighbors, and, yes, sometimes our enemies. Yet Islam as a religion is broken into factions. Conflict--sometimes bloody--between Sunnis and Shii stretches back more than a thousand years. Analytic Services senior editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong traces Islam’s origins and subsequent history and illustrates its religious principles, placing the prophet Muhammad squarely in the times he inhabited. Armstrong follows the history of Islam after Muhammad’s death in 632 and how the resulting violence over leadership set up rifts and differences that are seen in the Sunni and Shia divisions to this day. Analytic Services editor Noëlle MacKenzie reviews the book.

summary - In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden describes the November 4, 1979, takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, Iran, and the 444 days during which most of the staff was held hostage, as the crisis was lived by those who experienced it. Analytic Services Senior Editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Cobra II, Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, drawing on inside sources, U.S. intelligence, and interviews with top field commanders, tell “the inside story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.” Analytic Services Senior Editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Angry Wind, Jeffrey Tayler describes his travels through Muslim black Africa on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert--regions of desperate poverty where “any state … could serve as a base for Al-Qa’ida.” Analytic Services senior editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - In Dirty Dealing: The Untold Truth About Global Money Laundering, International Crime and Terrorism, Peter Lilley probes the underworld networks of corruption and crime, providing a helpful introduction to this shadow world. Joseph Wheatley reviews the book

summary - In The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11, author Ron Suskind details the government’s reaction to the September 11 attacks as well as its attempts to link the “Global War on Terror” to Iraq. Suskind’s theme is that U.S. policy has been guided by Vice President Cheney’s 1% doctrine that if there’s a 1% chance of a terrorist act, behave as if it’s a certainty. Analytic Services senior editor Steve Dunham reviews the book.

summary - Joseph Wheatley reviews Robert Pape’s book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, in which Pape draws upon his statistical database of purportedly every suicide bombing that took place in the world from 1980 to 2003.

summary - Kevin Baker of the Homeland Security Institute reviews The Economic Impacts of Terrorist Attacks, edited by Harry W. Richardson, Peter Gordon, and James E. Moore II. This volume largely results from the work of the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California. This compendium of 14 papers by more than 30 authors covers a wide-ranging list of topics associated with economic analysis of terrorism, presenting ways that economic methods and techniques can be applied to homeland security problems

summary - Dave Bounds, Jr., of ANSER reviews Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network by Benjamin Netanyahu, who argues that that terrorism, once properly understood, can be properly defeated.

summary - Joseph Wheatley reviews The Man Who Warned America: The Life and Death of John O’Neill, the FBI’s Embattled Counterterror Warrior by Murray Weiss. As early as 1995, O’Neill “recognized that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network posed the greatest terrorist threat to the United States, yet few in government shared that view at the time.” After playing a “significant role in almost all major U.S. terrorism investigations of the 1990s,” O’Neill retired from the FBI in 2001 to become head of security at the World Trade Center in New York, where he died on 11 September.

summary - With the touch of a master of the thriller, Harvard professor emeritus of Russian history, Richard Pipes, weaves together the fascinating story of intrigue, espionage, and counterespionage that characterized the young-adult life of Sergei Degaev and of which the friends and associates of the mature Alexander Pell had little clue.

summary - Joseph Wheatley reviews Jessica Stern’s Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. Stern has shed light on the psyches of some of the world’s most dangerous individuals.

summary - Ahmed Rashid's book is a brilliant discussion of the many elements that are in contention in this unstable region. Rashid is a highly regarded correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review in Central Asia and author of the bestseller Taliban.

summary - When Campbell’s groundbreaking book was published in 1997, it represented the first major study to apply a systematic conceptual approach to the problem of identifying the types of terrorist groups that are, or are not, likely to resort to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

summary - has written numerous monographs on the subject for his research institute, including managing the RAND terrorism incident chronology database. For several years he also taught and researched terrorism issues at St. Andrews University in Scotland. This is his first independently published book on terrorism. It is well written and extensively researched.

summary - The volume is based on a collection of papers presented by leading experts at a Hoover Institution conference on the threat of biological and chemical weapons (BCW).

summary - Stern, a former member of the National Security Council staff and now a Harvard University researcher, argues that in the post–Cold War world terrorist groups are likely to resort to devastating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the form of biological, chemical, and nuclear devices used against the United States and other state adversaries.

summary - The New Jackals is one of the first books to describe and place in its horrific magnitude the lethality of the ever escalating acts of terrorism that Ramzi Yousef and Usama bin Laden and their networks of extremist Islamic operatives and cells around the world carried out against the United States until 1998, presaging the mass casualty attacks of 11 September 2001.

summary - The sections on the potential threat examine a taxonomy of potential terrorist attacks, such as through injection or direct contact of biological agents, food, pharmaceutical and water contamination, animal vectors, and airborne BCW releases.

summary - Chasdi is an adjunct faculty member at Wayne State University’s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies and Department of Political Science.

summary - This volume was sponsored by the Nonproliferation Project of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where Tucker, the volume’s editor, is a senior research associate.

summary - The Future of Terrorism contains essays submitted at the conference for Future Developments in Terrorism, Cork, Ireland in March 1999. The central thesis of the essays, which resonates in the individual essays and the editor's introduction is that terrorism has evolved beyond the traditional view of state sponsored organizations, who commit acts of violence as an expression of nationalism.

summary - Written by prominent experts, this is an indispensable book for first responders. It provides step-by-step information for defending against chemical and biological attacks.

summary - This is the single best book available on the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Afghanistan responsible for harboring the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has spent most of his career reporting on the region--he has personally met and interviewed many of the Taliban's shadowy leaders.

summary - As a former national security advisor Anthony Lake warns about six terrifying threats that could jeopardize America's security in the coming years, and prescribes the steps needed to mitigate them.

summary - The handbook is a valuable, comprehensive, easy-to-use overview of all the components involved in securing facilities for security practitioners.