Jane Corbin's AL-QAEDA is a survey of the emergence of
modern Islamic terrorism, focusing on the rise of
Osama bin Laden and his network, the sequence of
terror attacks going through the Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam
bombings of 1998 to the September 11 2001 attacks on the
US, and the US intervention in Afghanistan that followed
the attacks.

I picked up this book with a few misgivings. It looked
like another "journalist's book", long on talk and short
on substance, saying little I hadn't found elsewhere and
worth only a quick skim to look for anything interesting.

In fact, AL-QAEDA turns out to be a sharply written and
engrossing read, at least up to about halfway through.
The last half of the book tends to lose focus and
accumulate loose ends, almost necessarily because Ms.
Corbin is trying to describe very recent events where
all the facts haven't been discovered, and many of the
facts that have are secrets.

This is forgiveable, and certainly this book does have
compensating virtues, the most prominent being Ms.
Corbin herself, who as a BBC international correspondent
shows up in the narrative every now and then. She has a
certain British "spunkiness", for want of a less corny
term, that is very appealing, with one aspect being
certain heartfelt views of things that she never allows to
degenerate into ranting or posturing.

For example, she regards Osama and al-Qaeda with a certain
cold, understated loathing, which comes out most
noticeably when she discusses the 1998 Nairobi bombing.
Ms. Corbin was raised in Kenya and does not spare her
detestation for terrorists who would kill over 200
innocent bystanders, most of them Muslims, to get at a
dozen Americans.

She relates with dry contempt Osama's attempts to
claim to the faithful in his ranks who were bothered by
this as well that the civilians were being used as "human
shields" by the Americans. She doesn't bother to call
him a vicious crackpot since the facts talk clearly for
themselves.

If AL-QAEDA is not a great or enduring book, it is
still an interesting read. Those who have been following
the subject may not find all that much new in it, but it
is probably well recommended to someone new to the
subject.

Corbin does a good job of analyzing the background to Al Qaeda and bin Laden. This is where her book's strong points are. Her insight behind the events provides the reader with ideas to pursue and some handles on why events unfolded and may unfold in the future.

Unfortunately she inexplicably left out an index and this makes her book very awkard to use as a research tool - looking for material to cite is problematic. She also does not spend much time on the structure of Al Qaeda or events she perhaps did not deal with as a BBC correspondent. Her hands-on personal experience and interviews are otherwise excellent.

This is a must read to help understand the people that destroyed our Nations Symbols of Power and tried to destroy our will and strength but only proved to Strengthen our Nations and make us eve more powerful. If you are unsure of who or why these people do what they do this is the book to get an idea.