Sources: Encyclopedia of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A New Era of Modern Warfare
Encyclopedia of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A New Era of Modern Warfare. Ed. by Spencer C. Tucker. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013. 683 pages. Acid free $100 (ISBN: 978-1-61069-279-3). Ebook available (978-1-61069-280-9), call for pricing.
Talk about timely—a reference book about insurgency arrives for review just as the Islamic State insurgency declares itself a caliphate. Someone might say this is an argument against reference books, that they can't possibly keep up with the pace of world events. But such a book edited by such a respected scholar as Tucker is relevant for anyone who wants a better understanding of where the Islamic insurgency fits in the flow of history. That history runs as far back as the Maccabean Revolt and right up to the wars of our time.
Tucker's format is conventional, with more than 400 alphabetized signed entries and a few illustrations across 636 pages. Each entry offers further readings. People ("Tecumseh"), insurgency movements ("Mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan War"), theories ("Hearts and Minds") and tactics ("Propaganda") are among the types of topics, with special attention to the American experience. The variety of topics is intended to show that various kinds of factors determine how an insurgency begins and how it fares. Also provided are a chronology, a bibliography, a list of contributors, an index and a small section of maps.
Insurgency is a rich subject for military thinkers. Between the colonial wars of the past century and the ethnic and cultural wars that just keep happening today, sustained violent opposition to various governments has been much more common than war between nation states. The publisher Routledge is mining this vein with special vigor. Among its recent titles are Tim Benbow's and Rod Thornton's Dimensions of Counter-Insurgency: Applying Experience to Practice ( 2014), Isabelle Duyvesteyn's and Paul B. Rich's The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency (2014), and Bruno C. Reis's and Andrew Mumford's The Theory and Practice of Irregular Warfare: Warrior-Scholarship in Counter-Insurgency (2013). All are more academic than Tucker's work, and while some handbooks are ready reference books, the Routledge handbook is a collection of only 29 essays.
Most similar to the new encyclopedia may be Ian F. W. Beckett's Encyclopedia of Guerrilla Warfare (ABC-CLIO, 1999), but it was published before 9/11 and covers only the previous few centuries. In many respects it can still serve well, but a public librarian hoping to put 21st century insurgencies in a larger and more political context will find the Tucker volume helpful.—Evan Davis, Librarian, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana.