Reviews for Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries

The average rating for Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-08-06 00:00:00 Tae Hyung Kim First of all, I've decided to keep this one on my Goodreads "Local Author" shelf, even though Dr. Naftali is no longer the director of the nearby Richard Nixon Presidential Library. I purchased the book a few years ago when he was in charge Nixon's "crib", so it will rest alongside my other local-author volumes for the time being. Second of all, I hesitated in awarding five stars to this book. I'm fairly well-read in the various fields of U.S. foreign policy but this is the only book I've read on the topic of counterterrorism. So it's possible that I may someday revise the five stars downward, in the event I end up acquiring a deeper and broader perspective on the subject. That said, this book contains a wealth of information on the development of U.S. counterterrorism policy since the end of World War II. Naftali devotes much attention to the key issues that occupied our nation's defense and intelligence establishment: The hijacking of commercial airliners in the 1960s; the rise of Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist activity in the 1970s; terror networks sponsored by "outlaw regimes" such as Iran and Libya during the 1980s; and so on, through the current Global War On Terror era. Naftali also tracks the growth of the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy, describing the origin and expansion of various government agencies in terms that the layman/general reader can understand. It must be noted that Blind Spot focuses on America's reaction to international terrorism -- that is, terrorist activity initiated by foreign governments and non-state actors such as Al-Qaeda. Consequently, readers interested in counterterror operations against domestic extremists (the Weather Underground, the right-wing militia movement, etc.) will need to look elsewhere.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-02-27 00:00:00 Laura Roberts I'm not sure what I expected when this book was assigned to me for homework, but it definitely wasn't this. This book reads like a textbook. It's 100% info dumping without any kind of plot line or narrative. It's nothing but sentences like, "He asked for a meeting with Reagan. They met. Reagan agreed with him." Very bland, dull, and, quite frankly, boring. It's highly historical, but that doesn't mean it has to put me to sleep. The first chunk was very interesting, but then it quickly became a struggle as the book sounded more and more like an encyclopedia...