Books

Essays by subject experts treat concepts and doctrines, policymaking, commerce and science, human rights and arms control, with specific articles on topics ranging from anti-imperialism to environmental diplomacy, from refugee policies to terrorism and countermeasures. Also includes a chronology.

Comprehensive guide to the history, uses, related scientific principles, and technology of espionage and intelligence, written by experts in the field. Topics range from the historical use of espionage to the emerging use of technology in modern espionage and counterintelligence.

Provides detailed discussions of the who, what, where, when, and why of terrorism, including definitions of key terms, famous cases, biographies, laws, and law enforcement techniques. Features a detailed chronology; photographs, maps, and charts; lists of solved and unsolved cases; known extremist and terrorist groups; key anniversaries and birthdays important to terrorist groups; a chronology of incidents in the United States; and a directory of organizations.

Contains new and updated original articles covering recent concepts (i.e. adoption, race, the Constitution, birthright citizenship) and court cases since 1992 offering comprehensive coverage of all aspects of constitutional law, as well as biographies of people who have had an impact on our government's legal framework (Supreme Court Justices, Presidents, Cabinet Members, Lawyers, and more). Also covers judicial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court.

Covers the origin, development, and results of all major national security policies over the last seven decades. A thoroughly interdisciplinary work, the encyclopedia views national security from a historical, economic, political, and technological perspective.

This volume explores the roots and evolution of terrorism, covering the nature of contemporary terrorism and terrorist organizations.

These volumes of primary source documents focus on leading social issues of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. International in scope, each title is devoted to one topic.

From Booklist
Kashmeri, an Internet journalist who covers transatlantic business, discusses recent political relations between the U.S and Europe. Blaming the U.S. for their poor condition, especially for charging into Iraq in 2003, Kashmeri does acknowledge that revamping institutions such as NATO has generated friction independent of controversies surrounding Iraq. The U.S. posture toward the European Union is another source of strain; the government and business leaders of this country, according to Kashmeri, being unable to decide if the EU is a rival or a partner. Throughout the work, he includes observations on these points obtained from interviews with about a dozen prominent ex-officeholders of the stature of Brent Scowcroft and John Major. Intermittently, Kashmeri describes friction that plainly emanates from the European side, such as France's reach for the paramount role within the EU, but the author's perspective explicitly requires the U.S. to change its ways. Readers keeping current on transatlantic affairs will benefit from, if not universally subscribe to, this informed analysis. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The United States faces extraordinary challenges on both the strategic and operational levels. At the strategic level, the national security environment is in flux and many of the structures, concepts, and methods of the past no longer apply to the conditions we now face. Containment, the alliance system, our military doctrine, and many other elements of national security policy were not designed for prolonged struggle with militant Islam, an ascendant China, a Russia which is no longer a containable super power enemy but a rival for influence at America's expense, a decline in American influence, and a sharply divided American polity. Generals Zeb Bradford and Frederic Brown, co-authors of the highly influential book on the U.S. military in Vietnam, U.S. Army in Transition, have teamed up again to discuss the need for a new era of transition within the Armed Forces. Bradford and Brown point to the current war in Iraq, a lack of interagency competence across the national government, and the botched disaster relief efforts of Katrina as glaring examples of the failure of America's Army to adapt to present-day challenges. Given the rapid and dramatic changes throughout the world, the authors stress how selective adaptation of specific programs and procedures can contribute to improving policy execution within and across all facets of government, including the armed forces. Yet this adaptation to change must be institutionalized, requiring the Army to become a constantly evolving learning organization. Only within this context can the army manage to act on the myriad demands of the day including taking the leadership in international cooperation, fighting the amorphous enemy of "The Long War" against terrorism, responding effectively to disaster scenarios, and engaging in stabilization and reconstruction efforts around the world.

This three-volume collection edited by Forest gathers together dozens of experts, military and academic, on the topic of global terrorism. Forest has written a preface and introduction to each volume. In effect, contributors' essays answer such questions from Forest as "What do we know about effectively countering terrorism?", "What are the characteristics of successful or unsuccessful counterterrorism campaigns?", and "What do we need to learn in order to better handle this threat?" Forest notes that terrorism has been around for hundreds of years and that the ability of terrorists to adapt to the changing international environment, use technology, and maintain lines of communication helps them remain viable. He recognizes that no single method will be successful in eradicating terrorism but advocates that nations themselves adapt by using not just greater technology but greater international communication and cooperation. The set is well organized, with chapters arranged thematically....Although each volume can in fact function as a standalone text, the set should be maintained as one complete work. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.Library Journal

Aiming to "encourage the development of learning organizations among national security professionals by examining what we currently know about the strategic application of hard and soft power in countering the sources and facilitators of terrorism," Forest presents a three-volume set of some 60 thematic essays and case studies summarizing existing knowledge in the field of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, largely from the perspective of the industrialized democracies.Reference & Research Book News

n post-Civil War America, civilians were ordinarily far-removed from the actual fighting. War brought about tremendous and far-reaching changes to America's society, politics, and economy nonetheless. Readers are offered detailed glimpses into the lives of ordinary folk struggling with the privations, shortages, and anxieties brought on by U.S. entry into war. They are also shown how they strove to turn changing times to their advantage, especially civically and economically, as minorities pressed for political inclusion and traders profited from government contracts and women took on well-paying skilled jobs in large numbers for the first time. Susan Badger Doyle's chapter on the Indian Wars in the American West shows how for whites the migration westward was the path to a land of opportunity, for Native Americans migration it was a disastrous epoch that led to their near-extermination. Michael Neiberg's piece on World War I highlights how America's entry into the war on the Allied side was far from universally popular or supported because of large German and Irish immigrant communities, and how this tepid support led to the creation of some of the harshest censorship and curtailment of civil rights in U.S. history. Judy Litoff's chapter on the home front during World War II focuses on the exceptional changes brought on by total mobilization for the war effort, African-Americans' push for expanded civil rights, to women entering the workforce in large numbers, to the public's acceptance, even expectation, of centralized planning and government intervention in economic and social matters. Jon Timothy Kelly's essay on the Cold War provides a look at how the country quickly returned to a state of readiness when the end of World War II ushered in the Cold War and the immanent threat of nuclear annihilation, even as a booming economy brought undreamt of material prosperity to huge numbers of Americans. Finally, James Landers describes how American involvement in Vietnam, the first televised war, profoundly changed American attitudes about war even as this particular conflict touched few Americans, but divided them like few previous events have.

Critics of the war on terror have pointed to the futility of waging war on a tactic. Its emphasis on denying "sanctuary" and "safe havens" to terrorists, rooted primarily in traditional counterinsurgency theory and poorly conceptualized policy statements, has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. To fully understand sanctuaries is to uncover the problems and pitfalls of waging war on locations--exposing the secret lives of multiple hidden worlds, filled with extremists, criminals, soldiers, and spies, with the pious and the profane, with dangers that lie below the surface and in the margins. As this volume makes abundantly clear, such a murky underground is far more complex and varied than the conventional wisdom suggests. Terrorists have hidden in plain sight in modern cities, used advanced communications technology to build virtual refuges, crafted militant enclaves out of the disarray of failed states, flocked to distinctly unsafe insurgent battlespaces, and generally challenged the protective limits of law, citizenship, and state. Denial of Sanctuary brings together top experts in the field to expand the debate; to explore the roots, causes and consequences of the problem; and to clarify our understanding of sanctuary in terrorist thought and practice.

Hurricane Katrina is the latest in a series of major disasters that were not well managed, but it is not likely to be the last. Category 4 and category 5 hurricanes will, according to most predictions, become both more frequent and more intense in the future due to global warming and/or natural weather cycles. In addition, it is often said that another terrorist attack on the United States is inevitable; that it is a question of when, not whether. Add to that the scare over a possible avian flu pandemic. As a result, the United States should expect that disaster response--to natural and other types of disasters--will continue to be of vital concern to the American public and the policymakers and officials who deal with disaster response and relief, including the military. The U.S. disaster relief program reflects a basic division of responsibility between federal, state, and local governments that has generally stood the test of time. At the federal level, a single agency, FEMA--now under the Department of Homeland Security--has been charged with the responsibility for coordinating the activities of the various federal agencies that have a role in disaster relief. A successful disaster response requires three things: timely and effective coordination between state and federal governments; effective coordination among the federal agencies; and effective coordination between and among state and local government agencies. Miskel, a former Deputy Assistant Associate Director of FEMA, examines the effects that operational failures after Hurricanes Agnes, Hugo, Andrew, and Katrina have had on the organizational design and operating principles of the disaster response system program. He also discusses the impact of 9/11 and the evolving role of the military, and he identifies reforms that should be implemented to improve the nation's ability to respond in the future.

This second edition presents in-depth coverage of actual response techniques and new approaches for coping with critical situations caused by criminal activity, industrial accidents, or even mini-epidemics. Augmenting its coverage of field first aid for response personnel, this edition contains up-to-date tools such as checklists and streamlined procedures for on-scene coordination. It incorporates the latest detection devices, cost/recovery and hazard analyses, diagnostic methods, pretreatments, vaccines, decontamination techniques, antidotes, and medical treatments available.

How does one effectively fight suicide bombers? What threat do they hold for Western society? How do people who love peace reconcile the need for war? Noted genocide expert Israel W. Charny addresses these questions in this highly personal description of suicide bombings and terror as the opening salvos of a Third World War. Charny first seeks to understand the psychology of suicide bombers, as well as the culture from which they emerge. Taking this understanding of what he calls human evil, he then proposes a hawkish campaign that ultimately emphasizes peace rather than irrational fear. By deeming suicide bombing and terrorism as necessary subjects in the study of psychology, Charny presents yet another weapon in the war against terrorism-a war that he believes will only escalate without drastic action. Ultimately, he calls for a "worldwide campaign for life" led by religious and secular leaders across the globe. He concludes the book with a vignette from Islamic culture that speaks nobly to furthering peace and life.

Organizations with computer networks, Web sites, and employees carrying laptops and Blackberries face an array of security challenges. Among other things, they need to keep unauthorized people out of the network, thwart Web site hackers, and keep data safe from prying eyes or criminal hands. This book provides a high-level overview of these challenges and more. But it is not for the hard-core IT security engineer who works full time on networks. Instead, it is aimed at the nontechnical executive with responsibility for ensuring that information and assets stay safe and private. Written by a practicing information security officer, Philip Alexander, the book contains the latest information and arms readers with the knowledge they need to make better business decisions. Information Security: A Manager's Guide to Thwarting Data Thieves and Hackers covers the following technical issues in a nontechnical manner: -The concept of "defense in depth" -Network design -Business-continuity planning -Authentication and authorization -Providing security for your mobile work force -Hackers and the challenges they can present -Viruses, Trojans, and worms But it doesn't stop there. The book goes beyond the technical and covers highly important topics related to data security like outsourcing, contractual considerations with vendors, data privacy laws, and hiring practices. In short, Alexander gives the reader a 360-degree look at data security: What to be worried about; what to look for; the tradeoffs among cost, efficiency, and speed; what different technologies can and can't do; and how to make sure technical professionals are keeping their eyes on the right ball. Best of all, it conveys information in an understandable way, meaning managers won't need to rely solely on the IT people in their own company--who may speak an entirely different language and have entirely different concerns. Hackers and data thieves are getting smarter and bolder every day. Information Security is your first line of defense.

Clark presents a brief history of the creation and development of the intelligence services in the United States. He centers his examination on the two main constants in the American way of gathering, processing, analyzing, and using intelligence; change and a concern for the impact of secret activities on democratic government. Resolving the ever-growing need for informed decision making continues to put pressure on the country's ability to manage and provide oversight of intelligence. Clark assesses how those forces have resulted in ongoing changes to the intelligence apperatus in the United States. Consistent with other volumes in this series, Clark supplements his narrative with key documents and brief biographies of influential personalities within the intelligence community to further illustrate his conclusions. Clark provides a current, explanatory text and reference work that deals with what intelligence is, what it can and cannot do, how it functions, and why it matters within the context of furthering American national security. He describes the U.S. intelligence community prior to WWII, demonstrating that intellignece gathering and espionage have played a key role in national security and warfare since the inception of the Republic. Through their ubiquity, Clark establishes them as a necessary function of government and governmental decision making. Today, the intelligence apparatus encompasses numerous activities and organizations. They are all responsible for different parts of the practice of collecting, processing, analyzing, disseminating, and using intelligence. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, significant stresses began to appear in the U.S. approach to the intelligence process; Clark concludes by chronicling those stresses and the attendant drive for change was accelerated after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Nuclear Insecurity is an insider's account of official American efforts to prevent the theft or diversion of nuclear and radiological weapons that could be used by rogue nations or terrorist groups. This perspective draws heavily from the author's work on the White House National Security Council Staff (1996-2000), where he was directly responsible to President Clinton for the development of U.S. nuclear material security policies and, subsequently, at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he directed the department's largest international nuclear security program, focused primarily on Russia. In Caravelli's assessment, despite exceptional bipartisan political support and very high funding levels that have reached over $9 billion, a series of policy mistakes and programmatic bureaucratic missteps have badly compromised the United States government's efforts to protect against the spread of nuclear weapons and materials. The most striking example of the current situation is that the U.S. government, some 12 years after the start of these programs, still has failed to enhance the security of more than 300 metric tons of nuclear materials in Russia alone, enough to make hundreds of nuclear devices. The book concludes with recommendations and policy prescriptions for addressing some of these problems.

Given that the war on terror is currently being fought the way crime typically is-after the fact-this country cannot protect its citizens from future terrorist events solely in this way. Instead, measures must be taken to actually stop terrorists before they can attack. Here, the authors argue that government anti-terrorism policy must pay much more attention to reducing opportunities for terrorist attacks by protecting vulnerable targets, controlling the tools and weapons used by terrorists, and by removing the conditions of everyday life that make these attacks possible. While some of this work is done on an ad hoc basis, there are no recognized methods to guide the work, there is limited experience on which to draw, and the government has no trained professionals to oversee the work. In this book, the authors address these deficiencies, and lay out a systematic approach for reducing opportunities for terrorism. The current "take-them-out mindset" may be the main reason why reducing opportunities for terrorism has been so neglected by governments, but another important reason is that the task seems so overwhelmingly difficult. How can we possibly protect every vulnerable target or person? How can we control all the everyday tools that terrorists must use in carrying out their attacks? How can we control their weapons when we cannot even keep guns out the hands of ordinary criminals? In this book, the authors show that these tasks are indeed manageable. They take readers through the methods for preventing terrorism and the policies that will assist in this important work. They show that in order to protect the country from terrorists, security forces must do what the terrorists do: identify vulnerable targets, analyze their specific weaknesses, consider the tools and weapons needed to attack, and assess access to the targets. Once these steps are taken, security agencies can then provide appropriate protection, limit accessibility, anticipate the forces needed to combat a potential attack, and plan carefully for an attack if it does occur. By "outsmarting the terrorists" security forces undertake the same analysis of vulnerabilities and opportunities that terrorists themselves undertake in planning their operations, and can more effectively defeat them before they strike. This books shows how this approach works and can succeed.

The fate of war prisoners through history has been cruel and haphazard. The lives of captives hung by a thread. Execution, enslavement, torture, or being held for ransom were equally likely. International agreements developed haltingly through the 19th and 20th centuries to culminate in the Geneva Accords of 1929. America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. Since biblical times, war captives have been considered property and counted as booty to be enslaved or killed. Americans were interested in generals and weapons and battles, but not the fate of prisoners of war. The Second World War, when 90,000 Americans fell into enemy hands, began to change that. Concern for our POWs in Germany and Japan, and close contact with enemy camps in America began to change our attitudes. However, it was the Vietnam War, media-driven and polarizing, that caused the American public to truly reevaluate the plight of its sons and brothers, heroic and clearly loyal, as they fell into the hands of an inscrutable and apparently unyielding distant enemy. More recently, during the first Gulf War of 1991 and the current War on Terrorism, the issue of prisoners of war has moved to center stage, involving the clash of ideologies, politics, and expediency. Since 9/11, the rights and safety of prisoners of war caught up in the War on Terror have been debated in Congress and adjudicated on by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whose conclusions were protested by numerous organizations. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before, and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy.

In the most comprehensive, practical handbook on business security to date, security and subject-matter experts show how organizations can prevent or manage crises, protect employees overseas, control privacy issues, deal with natural disasters, keep electronic communication safe from prying eyes or malice, avoid workplace violence and acts of terror, assess risk, train employees in security issues, and manage dozens of other things prudent managers need to know to protect their organizations from the unthinkable. Two volumes cover everything necessary to keep people, infrastructure, and systems safer: Volume 1: Securing the Enterprise Volume 2: Securing People and Processes Covering all dimensions of security in the twenty-first century, the PSI Handbook of Business Security offers case examples, practical checklists/templates, sidebars, a glossary, resources, and primary documents--all designed to keep both employees and infrastructure safe when trouble strikes. And strike it will, making this essential reading for security experts, senior executives, line and HR managers, and anyone else with a corporate responsibility for infrastructure, processes, or other people. The PSI Handbook of Business Security covers current issues and practices in organizational safety and security, business continuity, and crisis management. Each chapter is written by an expert in the topic, and each provides a background explanation of the issue at hand, examples of innovative practices, and insights into current controversies and emerging trends. Emphasizing best practices across the private, public, non-profit, and institutional sectors--in the U.S. and internationally--the set also contains diagnostic aids, facts and figures, definitions, and illuminating case examples. Over the course of both volumes, readers will learn where businesses are most vulnerable, which technological innovations increase safety and security, how to deal with security issues in danger zones, how to use surveillance and other technology without crossing ethical or legal boundaries, how to fend off computer hackers, and how to provide psychological as well as physical security. If you're in business, you're at risk. The PSI Handbook of Business Security will serve as sturdy armor to protect people from the inevitable security challenges that come with doing business in a global economy.

From grassroots terrorism to the nuclear ambitions of hostile nations, the United States faces increasingly complex threats to its national security, and combating these threats continues to demand a reshaping of the nation's security structure, military forces, and defense expenditures. In this study, Anthony Cordesman offers a detailed analysis of critical challenges affecting U.S. national security and how failures in adapting to these challenges have exacerbated the strains on available resources. He systematically identifies the most glaring obstacles to successful national security planning and proposes constructive and practical ways to proceed in the future. Cordesman focuses on 10 specific challenges addressed within the context of the Iraq War, Afghan War, War on Terrorism, and the risk of conflict over the Taiwan Strait. Out of the lessons drawn from these experiences, he examines the future of international coalitions, asymmetric warfare, nation building, and stability operations, and concludes that perhaps the most pressing area for change is the need for accountability among civilian and military policymakers.

While several fine texts on intelligence have been published over the past decade, there is no complementary set of volumes that addresses the subject in a comprehensive manner for the general reader. This major set explains how the sixteen major U.S. intelligence agencies operate, how they collect information from around the world, the problems they face in providing further insight into this "raw" information through the techniques of analysis, and the difficulties that accompany the dissemination of intelligence to policymakers in a timely manner. In addition to intelligence collection and analysis and the subject of intelligence accountability, this set addresses the challenges of counterintelligence and counterterrorism, as well covert action. Further, it provides comparisons regarding the various approaches to intelligence adopted by other nations around the world. Its five volumes underscore the history, the politics, and the policies needed for a solid comprehension of how the U.S. intelligence community functions in the modern age of globalization, characterized by a rapid flow of information across national boundaries.

The Arrow and the Olive Branch is a cross between The Federalist Papers, the instructions our founding fathers wrote explaining how the Constitution should work, and The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli's 16th-century treatise on statecraft. It begins with the 9/11 attacks, and then goes back to George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address, in which he warned his compatriots of the dangers of foreign entanglements. It then reconstructs the doctrine of practical idealism chronologically, examining every foreign policy precedent set by every president since Washington. Less than three decades after Washington left office, for example, James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off limits to future European colonization. In the mid-19th century, Ulysses Grant asserted that the Monroe Doctrine gave America the right to intervene in Cuba's fight for independence, but counseled restraint in the use of American power. In the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt redefined the scope of the Monroe Doctrine, asserting that America's sphere of influence included the entire world. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson envisioned a new international system based on open diplomacy, free trade, and self-determination. From gunboat diplomacy to dollar diplomacy, from world war to limited war, cold war to preemptive war, The Arrow and the Olive Branch tells a unique version of American history and illuminates many of the international challenges we face today. Anyone who believes the old adage that politics should end at the water's edge will find this book to be an invaluable resource. Relying exclusively on primary documents rather than secondary sources, the book is carefully researched and strictly nonpartisan. Despite shifting alliances, historical events, and technological advances, the doctrine of practical idealism has not changed much in more than 200 years.

The issue of the "imperial presidency", which is raised in connection with the Bush administration's response to the legal issues flowing from the 9/11 attacks, is one that now resonates broadly across the American political landscape: not just with Democrats, but with Republicans too; and not just with lawyers, but with the American public generally. Are the legal powers of the President unlimited in cases of terrorist attacks on the United States? Do the courts and legislatures have a role to play? How relevant is the U.S. Constitution in these instances? These reports, compiled by the NYC Bar Association, merit wider distribution. Thus, Silkenat and Shulman have brought them together to give readers a clearer sense of what the rule of law really means to Americans. As noted in a New York Times editorial in January 2006: "Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by the president embarked on an ideological crusade." Over the past few years, much lip service has been paid to the phrase "rule of law." At the same time, the U.S. government has avoided basic rule of law principles by holding prisoners outside the law (off the books and out of Red Cross supervision, off shore or even on U.S. soil, but without due process or urgent matter that bears on the security of this country). In both volumes, learned practitioners and scholars argue in favor of adherence to time-tested principles. Each report has a preface that places the material in historical and legal context.