Jacob N. Shapiro, “The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations” (Princeton UP, 2013)

New Books in Sociology · Nov 27, 2014 · 42m

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…