This book started out as a good overview of terrorism. How words will define the reality of a situation, how terrorism depends on the media for the terror effect, how terrorist attacks are random while still having a target, and a fairly good discussion of how terrorism is defined. However, at about the halfway point, the book became too focused towards the ETA, a terrorist organization supporting Basque nationalists. This book went from a discussion of terrorism, to a discussion of how the police were abusing their power while trying to fight the ETA. I suppose it covered the topic well, but it was annoying because I wanted a book on terrorism in general, not a book about the ETA and the police.

Zulakika's Basque Violence is a confusing and chaotic work which attempts to examine the cultural background to the question of why a terroristic form of violence haunts the Basque people. The works' shortcomings are abundant and ubiquitous throughout his writing. No one outside of the field of ethnography will be able to comprehend the overpowering amount of ethnographic jargon that inundates Zulakika's work. His work is also delinquent in the fact that very few readers outside of the Basque culture could understand or find the thesis of the work. The reader feels as if he or she is stuck the eccentric mind of a bedlamite, who is rattling off the hagiology of the Basque culture from the Paleolithic era to modern day. The book is structured in what would appear at first glance to be studies of different areas of Basque culture and its relation to the violence that has been occurring in the area; however, the book fails to accomplish this task as well. Readers will be greatly disappointed with this work because it does not realize any of the intended goals that the author set for himself work.