Peter Bergen

Eye-opening argument that despite our national obsession with terrorists in far away places who may send agents to our shores to commit unspeakable deeds, the real danger comes from the homegrown, lone wolf variety: American citizens who, for whatever reasons, are persuaded, often without any direct contact, to take up the banner of those far away organizations. We are more comfortable thinking that persons who could do such things could not possible be one of us. But that ignores the show more evidence of Timothy McVeigh, Dylan Roof, and other terrorists who needed no foreign assistance or persuasion to take up arms against their fellow citizens.

The final chapters are weaker than the rest of the book, only because they try to describe events that are still unfolding. But Bergen's discussion of events in the past, ones that we think we know very well, show how much more there is to learn. Highly recommended. show less

I was 18 on September 11th, 2001, and I remember exactly where I was when I found out what had happened that morning. I have tried to keep up on current events for a long time, and I remember reading and/or hearing about many of the events in this book - the shooting in Little Rock, the Boston Marathon bombing, Nidal Hasan, the idiot from Florida who blew himself up in Syria in 2014, among others. This book is invaluable for the context it gives to these events. The only serious drawback is show more that it does not have the space to describe every event in detail. The author cites 360 as the number of individual American terrorists described in the book. Although I have my doubts, there's an awful lot of them. Giving deep descriptions of all of their stories would make this book 1500 pages long and unreadable. So although a reader may want a "Simple Truths"*-style book, it's just not feasible with the number of cases covered here.

Because I remember reading and hearing about many of these cases, this book was a relatively easy read in terms of subject matter. For those who are a decade or so younger than me, some of this will probably be all-new information, unless they made a habit of studying American jihadis in the aughts.

The terrorists, for the most part, come off as what they were - losers, criminals, misfits, and in some cases people who were seriously mentally ill. The author does an ok job of pointing out that typical American Muslims were completely opposed to these murderous punks and their worldviews, but the best example of that comes in the book's epilogue.

The American government, specifically the FBI and to a lesser extent the NSA and CIA, take a few solid hits in this book. The NYPD doesn't come off smelling like roses, either. The FBI botched multiple cases, and the NYPD's ham-handed mishandling of the Najibullah Zazi case reads more like a "Police Academy Fights Terrorism" script than anything else. Also, anyone harboring any illusions about President Obama being against war in all its forms will be in for a rude awakening in this book. I personally did not know that he talked about being good at killing people - but he's quoted as saying that in this book. Considering the long list of drone strikes that have made headlines (the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, among others), I'm inclined to believe him.

Even though I knew a lot of the subject material already, this was a very interesting and informative book. I wholeheartedly back the quote from the book's cover, which is attributed to Janet Napolitano: "The best one-volume treatment available on the current state of jihad in America." show less

An absolutely astounding and eye opening account of America's homegrown terrorists. Peter Bergen does a marvelous job researching nearly 500 American terrorists and breaking down why they choose to go lone-wolf or join a terrorist organization and kill others. He talks about ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and lone wolf terrorists not affiliated with any Muslim extremist groups. It puts a new perspective on a scary, ever changing subject. Bergen breaks down the appeals of different groups, what the show more government is trying to do to prevent terrorism, and what ordinary citizens can do to help curb the violence. It's a masterful book and it really makes you think. Here are some sound bites I found particularly compelling:

"... in the years after 9/11, an American residing in the United States was around five thousand times more likely to be killed by a fellow citizen with a gun than by a terrorist inspired by the ideology of Osama bin Laden."

"Among the 330 militants examined for this book, none of the generalizations hold. Their average age is twenty-nine; more than a third are married and a similar proportion have children; 12% have served time in prison, compared to 9% of the American male population, while around 10% had mental health issue, a lower incidence than in the general population. They are, on average, as well educated and emotionally stable as the typical citizen. They are ordinary Americans."

A fantastic and compelling book. A must read for our trying times.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books in return for my honest, unbiased book review. show less

Trump picking military bearing generals "out of central casting" and then disagreeing and disowning them while acting impulsively and chaotically. Sure, lots here revelatory and discrediting on Trump's behavior, but I felt my mind thinking to John F. Kennedy and the power of television for that president seen from debate to assassination on TV. What do we have now, a man who has seen too much TV -- one more about the power and divisiveness of post-TV social media? Some dysfunctional show more societies have state-run TV. Do we have a TV-run state?

I think some future historian(s) will suss this out. show less