Terrorism studies: What we have forgotten and what we now know

In our current troubled times, terrorism and the threat of attacks on liberal states preoccupies both policymakers and much of the scholarly community. Four important books are reviewed here. These works represent the evolution of thinking on terrorism over the last three turbulent decades. Revisiting earlier thinking and bringing debates up to date about how to understand and respond to violent threats allows us to ponder what we ‘now know’ and may not know about terrorism and liberal states.