WAR WITHOUT END

Also a journalist, who has reported on the Middle East and Central Asia for 20 years, Hiro offers a deeper and broader study, including the history of Islam and the beginning of its modern confrontation with the West in the 19th century. Then he focuses on how fundamentalist Islam developed in three countries—Egypt, Saudia Arabia and Afghanistan—and ends with a reasoned argument as to why America's present course may lead to "war without end." Maps, illus. (Sept. 16)