Wars on Terrorism

Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism (1988), by David C. Martin and John Walcott. The Reagan administration’s prosecution of America’s first— frustratingly unsuccessful and inchoate—war on global terrorism.

Big Boys’ Rules: The Secret Struggle Against the IRA (1992), by Mark Urban. How elite British special-operations and intelligence units systematically weakened the IRA throughout the 1980s and paved the way for the Good Friday Accords and, a decade later, peace.

The Hunt for the Engineer: How Israeli Agents Tracked the Hamas Master Bomber (1999), by Samuel M. Katz. An engrossing account of the “targeted assassination” of the mastermind behind the wave of suicide bombings that convulsed Israel during the mid-1990s.

Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland, 1969–1984 (1985), by Desmond Hamill. The story of how the British army—thrust ...