World Terrorism: An Encyclopedia of Political Violence from Ancient Times to the Post–9/11 Era attempts to cover political violence throughout a wide swath of human history. As noted in the introduction, this presents challenges that range from the roots of the term terrorism in the French Revolution to the difficulty of categorizing state and non-state violence under the broad definition of terrorism. These challenges are addressed well in the collection’s introductory set of essays that focus on definitions, types, and categories of political violence. Taking a wide angle view, the work adopts the following definition of terrorism: “the use of violence or the threat of violence to effect political change through fear” (xix). This large scope becomes problematic when attempting to include events that took place prior to the 20th Century. There are only about a dozen entries spanning from ancient times to 1900, resulting in very broad coverage of regions and historical events in this large span of time. Taken as a whole, however, the work achieves the aim of broad historical, geographic, and topical coverage of terrorism even though the coverage focuses mostly on twentieth and twenty-first century events.

The encyclopedia is organized in three volumes. Volume one focuses on a typology of terrorism and its historical roots through World War II. Volume two focuses on modern terrorism and the response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. Volume three covers tactics and aims of modern terrorism. In addition to a standard index the work includes such useful items as a directory of terrorist groups, chronology of events from 1945, and a fairly extensive twenty-two page bibliography.

The work is not unique among encyclopedias that focus on terrorism and political violence. Recently, an updated version of The Sage Encyclopedia of Terrorism (Sage, 2011) was published. Although there is much overlap between these works, the Sage encyclopedia focuses much more on terrorism as a modern phenomenon. This editorial difference results in entries in the World Terrorism encyclopedia that provide more in-depth historical context to more recent events. For example, the World Terrorism entry on Uighur nationalism in Northwest China provides historical context dating back to the Han dynasty and moving through 19th and 20th Centuries. The Sage encyclopedia on the other hand focuses entirely on the current manifestations of Uighur nationalism as they have occurred since the mid-twentieth century. There is also Combs’ Encyclopedia of Terrorism (Facts on File, 2007), which, like its Sage counterpart, focuses on modern terrorism.

This work is recommended for public and academic libraries. Libraries that are only purchasing one encyclopedia on this topic would be advised to consider the depth of historical coverage in the work and throughout the entries.