Terrorist Attacks on American Soil

January 1, 2013

The United States has suffered a number of violent attacks on its own soil. Martinez (Coming for To Carry Me Home) surveys 12 of them: three in the 19th century (e.g., the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre); five in the "Modern Era" (e.g., the Ku Klux Klan's 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963); and four examples of "Postmodern Terror" (e.g., the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11). He examines each attack to determine whether it qualifies as a "terrorist act." The choice of the Mormon destruction of a wagon train in 1857 at Mountain Meadows makes an odd start--Martinez concludes that it was not terrorism. He covers the social circumstances surrounding each attack in order to describe the motivations and origins of the perpetrators. In the cases of individual actors such as Ted Kazinsky, the Unibomber, this is effective; when touching upon the Weathermen or the Klan the context is less clearly delineated. Martinez's conclusion, hardly a surprise, is that throughout history disaffected people have resorted to terrorism to spread or emphasize their causes. VERDICT For lay readers or underclassmen, this work, which lacks groundbreaking insights, might be a good choice.--Edwin Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS

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