9/11 and the War on Terror: A Documentary and Reference Guide. By Paul J. Springer. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2016. 339 p. Acid free $86.40 (ISBN 978-1-4408-4333-4). E-book available (978-1-4408-4334-1), call for pricing.

In the nearly sixteen years since the terrible events of September 11, 2001, nearly 13,000 non-fiction books have been written about that day. Topics range from first-person accounts to memorials to collections of documents. A new addition to the crowded field is 9/11 and the War on Terror: A Documentary and Reference Guide. The author, Paul J. Springer, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Professor of Comparative Military History at the Air Command and Staff College in Alabama. His work presents excerpts of declassified documents, chosen to illustrate the effects on and between terrorism and counterterrorism. The selected material is freely available elsewhere, but in this collection the author provides a useful chronology and a short analysis of both the impetus to create the document and its effects. The documents are divided into four sections: “Documents Prior to September 11, 2001,” “Documents from 9/11 and the Immediate Aftermath,” “Documents from the Presidency of George W. Bush,” and “Documents from the Presidency of Barack Obama.” In addition to standard indexing, there is a further grouping of documents by similar subjects, such as Al Qaeda Communications and Congressional Testimony. Each entry is documented with the full title, date and place of creation, its significance, and complete source information.

Scattered throughout the entries are sidebars entitled “Did You Know?” which provide snippets of information on topics such as “World Trade Center Complex,” “Sunni,” “Anthrax Attacks of 2001” and so on.

It is both fascinating and chilling to read “Mohamed Atta’s Letter to Fellow Attackers,” which provides detailed instructions on how they should prepare on the Last Night, directing them to prepare spiritually and practically, including how to bathe and dress. There is a sobering effect when reading “The President’s Daily Brief from Central Intelligence Agency” dated August 6, 2001, which warns that Bin Laden is intent on attacking, but fails to provide anything more specific than “a vague threat of an airliner hijacking to negotiate a hostage exchange” (78).

There are other works which focus on documents relating to this event. Many, however, do not include the actual text of the documents and are now rather dated, as they exclude more recent events such as the emergence of ISIL. One of these earlier works is Paul Thompson’s The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11—And America’s Response (Regan/Harper Collins, 2004). The complete citation for each document is provided, but not the text, although there is an explanation as to the significance of the item. Other sources that Springer’s work complements include America Confronts Terrorism: Understanding the Danger and How to Think about It by John Prados (Dee 2002), the CD-ROM set September 11, 2001: Comprehensive Reference Resource (United States National Guard Bureau 2002), and September 11, 2001 by the Poyner Institute (Andrews McMeel 2001), which is a collection of front pages of local newspapers, foreign and domestic, from 9/11/2001. The Digital National Security Archive from ProQuest is a subscription database and does include essays and other enhancements, in addition to the full text of 93,000 declassified documents.

The full-text excerpts and essays combine to make 9/11 and the War on Terror: A Documentary and Reference Guide useful to researchers at many levels, from middle school students and college students to the general public. Recommended for school, undergraduate, and public libraries.—Carla Wilson Buss, Curriculum Materials and Education Librarian, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia