New website promotes high-quality books on international security and 11 September incidents

Two weeks after the attacks in New York and Washington, websites move from "breaking news" to background information. While the web is the primary source for up-to-date information, book sales in the areas of international security have substantially increased. Not surprising, then, that some websites have taken to disseminating knowledge about security threats by promoting carefully selected reference works.

[Two weeks after the attacks in New York and Washington, websites move from "breaking news" to background information.
While the web is the primary source for up-to-date information, book sales in the field of international security have substantially
increased. Not surprising, then, that some websites have taken to disseminating knowledge about security threats by promoting
carefully selected reference works.]

The images from the World Trade Center attacks will stick in everyone's memory for the rest of their lives. But
internaitonal security concerns run deeper than the special-effect-like images of collapsing buildings. Some websites
have decided to promote a seemingly outdated "information technology": One example is the website
http://www.ministry-of-information.org , which has been online since spring 2001, but only after 11 September
has moved to promoting high-quality books. This is done in an attempt to disseminate to the wider public
awareness of the underlying causes of security threats. The selection of books ranges from classic studies
on the psychology of terrorism to up-to-date studies of terrorist groups. Notable is the absence of books that
try to exploit the subject in a sensational fashion. It is to be hoped that the public will re-discover the
value of background information in these difficult times. It would be an irony if the Internet, hated by
fundamentalists as a symbol of "Western" liberalism, would pave the way for a renaissance
of the book as the first and foremost means of enlightenment. http://www.ministry-of-information.org
certainly deserves some credit if this were to be the case.