When Terrorism Was First Fashionable

Terrorism is once more en vogue. College students, third-rate musicians, and second-rate actors have come out unabashedly in favor of a terror group committed to the destruction of the world’s sole Jewish state. The West is wracked with self-doubt and extremist movements aided by foreign funds and a dangerous utopianism.

Readers of Joby Warrick’s new book, The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World’s First Super-Terrorist, might note that what is old is new again. Warrick, a longtime Washington Post correspondent, has authored several bestselling books on modern terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. But his latest work examines the career of an altogether different type of terrorist.