Documenting the Terror: Several Instant Books Set

by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 9/24/2001

So far, instant books about the World Trade Center and Pentagon tragedy are limited apparently to a couple of productions by online operations, with an on-demand audience in view: BookSurge.com, with an oral history about the dreadful day, and fictionwise.com, with a tribute to the many firefighters who lost their lives--both saying that their profits would be donated to appropriate good causes. In print, Harper's Reganbooks is lining up contributors to a literary anthology centering on the tragedy called God Bless America; pub date uncertain as of now.

The sale two years ago of a planned book on Osama bin Laden to the Free Press hardly seemed like big news then. Now, however, the book, Holy War: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden by Peter Bergen, a terrorism analyst for CNN, has been moved from its former pub date of next spring to early November. Bergen is one of the few Westerners to actually meet and interview bin Laden (in 1997), and he's been studying the man, his philosophy and his movement ever since.

In addition, novelist Caleb Carr will produce a book on the history of terrorism, to be called The Conquest of Terror, for Random. It will "examine the historical roots of terrorism since ancient times and show why it has been, though immensely destructive, an ultimately failed tactic." Carr will look at various acts of terrorism from the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages to last week's attacks.