New Books In National Security

Jacob N. Shapiro‘s The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2013) is a welcome addition to a field that sometimes depicts terrorist activity as an unfamiliar, idiosyncratic phenomenon. Shapiro convincingly argues that, far from being alien to our everyday experience, many terrorist organizations must necessarily deal with the bureaucracy, infighting, and tradeoffs which permeate familiar government and corporate entities. The style of the book is direct and concise, clearly setting out its assumptions, hypotheses and conclusions throughout.The Terrorist’s Dilemma is also rich in historical analysis of a variety of secular and religious militant groups, including diverse examples from Irish, Russian, Palestinian, and Iraqi history. By weaving together a narrative from terrorist memoirs, game theory, and seized militant documents,The Terrorist’s Dilemma offers a uniquely valuable perspective on the mundane reality that extremist leaders