Chil­dren’s

Glob­al Coun­ter­strike: Inter­na­tion­al Counterterrorism

Samuel M. Katz
  • Review
By – August 3, 2012
Glob­al Coun­ter­strike: Inter­na­tion­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism is the most recent in a Lern­er series called Ter­ror­ist Dossiers,” all by Samuel Katz, a rec­og­nized expert in the field. For­mat­ted in somber col­ors and some rather grainy black and white pho­tographs, it is divid­ed into chap­ters on Europe, the Mid­dle East, and oth­er inter­na­tion­al forces in places like Cana­da, Poland, and South Korea. With­in each chap­ter, there are lists called Who’s Who and What’s What,” and sec­tions that dis­cuss ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties in var­i­ous coun­tries and the steps those coun­tries have tak­en to com­bat ter­ror­ism. The writ­ing style is clear and easy to fol­low and the infor­ma­tion is not eas­i­ly found else­where. Accu­rate through March 2004, it does not include the recent attacks in Lon­don. How­ev­er, four rel­a­tive­ly reli­able web­sites, includ­ing the U.S. State Department’s Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Office, are list­ed as sources to sup­ple­ment the con­tents of the book. Append­ed mate­r­i­al also includes a time­line from 1921 to 2004, a select­ed bib­li­og­ra­phy, sug­ges­tions for fur­ther read­ing as well as view­ing, and a detailed index. Glob­al Coun­ter­strike and anoth­er book in the same series, Jerusalem Or Death (2004) are both rec­om­mend­ed for ages 11 – 14. The third title in the series, Jihad: Islam­ic Fun­da­men­tal­ist Ter­ror­ism (2004) is not as strong as anoth­er on the same sub­ject: Kim Whitehead’s Islam­ic Fun­da­men­tal­ism (Mason Crest, 2004), which is out­stand­ing for the his­tor­i­cal back­ground on Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism that it provides.
Lin­da R. Sil­ver is a spe­cial­ist in Jew­ish children’s lit­er­a­ture. She is edi­tor of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries’ Jew­ish Val­ues­find­er, www​.ajl​jew​ish​val​ues​.org, and author of Best Jew­ish Books for Chil­dren and Teens: A JPS Guide (The Jew­ish Pub­li­ca­tion Soci­ety, 2010) and The Jew­ish Val­ues Find­er: A Guide to Val­ues in Jew­ish Children’s Lit­er­a­ture (Neal-Schu­man, 2008).

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