cover image A FURY FOR GOD: The Islamist Attack on America

A FURY FOR GOD: The Islamist Attack on America

Malise Ruthven, . . Granta, $16.95 (324pp) ISBN 978-1-86207-540-5

Much in this book will, as the author admits, be familiar—the events of September 11, the idea of jihad— but former BBC journalist and scholar Ruthven is worth reading for the occasional stunning insight he offers into the psychology underlying terrorism by drawing on less well-known scholarship. He asserts, for instance, that the motivations of suicide attackers are not naïve faith or "Islamic heroism, but... Nietzschean despair"—a frustration with the world's refusal to conform to the right path laid down by God. (Sept. 26)