Brian Forst joined the American University faculty after twenty years in nonprofit research, including positions as research director at the Institute for Law and Social Research and the Police Foundation. He is author most recently of After Terror (with Akbar Ahmed, 2005), Errors of Justice: Nature, Sources, and Remedies (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and The Privatization of Policing: Two Views (with Peter Manning, 1999). He is a member of the American University Senate and chairs the Department of Justice, Law, and Society's doctoral program. He is also a voting member of the Sentencing Commission for the District of Columbia.

• 1. The nature of terrorism; 2. Theories of aggression and terrorism; 3. A brief history of terrorism; 4. Two trajectories of humankind: globalization or clash?; 5. Religion, the state, and terrorism; 6. Nonreligious extremism and terrorism; 7. Technology and terrorism; 8. Terrorism throughout the world; 9. Responses to terrorism; 10. Fear of terrorism; 11. Preventing terrorism: short-term approaches; 12. Preventing terrorism: long-term strategies; 13. Balancing security and rights to liberty and privacy; 14. Toward a safer and saner 21st century.

“This is a very useful book. Anyone who plans to study terrorism will wish to have this excellent overview – and list of sources – on their desk."– Amitai Etzioni, author of Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy and Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University