Volume 52, Number 14 · September 22, 2005
Why They Do It
By Christian Caryl
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
by Robert A. Pape
Random House, 335 pp., $25.95
Making Sense of Suicide Missions
edited by Diego Gambetta
Oxford University Press, 378 pp., $45.00
Suicide Bombers: Allah's New Martyrs
by Farhad Khosrokhavar,translated from the Frenchby David Macey
Pluto Press, 258 pp., $27.50 (paper)
Perfect Soldiers: The Hijackers—Who They Were, Why They Did It
by Terry McDermott
HarperCollins, 330 pp., $25.95
The Road to Martyrs' Square:A Journey into the Worldof the Suicide Bomber
by Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg
Oxford University Press, 214 pp., $26.00
Suicide Terrorism
by Ami Pedahzur
Polity Press, 255 pp., $59.95; $24.95 (paper)(to be published in November)
Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror
by Mia Bloom
Columbia University Press, 251 pp., $24.95
On a clear hot day near the end of October 2003, I was finishing breakfast in my Baghdad hotel room when the distant thud of an immense explosion shivered the windows. In Iraq we had long since become accustomed to sporadic attacks of various kinds, but it soon became apparent that this was something new. The next blast, equally huge, came around fifteen minutes later, while we were running down to our car. Another followed soon after that, as we were heading downtown; and then another. Whatever was going on, it was definitely big. As we neared the center of the city we could see a plume of smoke rising into the sky. We stopped to ask passersby and policemen what had happened. 'They hit the Red Cross,' someone told us. That had been the first explosion. Subsequent attacks, it seemed, were targeting police stations all around the city. And it wasn't over yet.
Review, 5443 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |