Jaw-jaw is better than war-war is the main thrust of this accessible and engrossing history of the changing face of terrorism. Taylor is an award-winning investigative reporter and his 40-year career is presented here as a journey from the IRA to al-Qaida  not a journey many of us would care to make. Taylor cut his teeth covering Northern Ireland (in 1977 the Labour government told Thames TV they found his documentary on the Maze prison "unhelpful"), and parleying with hardened Irish republicans and later with hardline jihadis has only strengthened his conviction that talking to the enemy is the only way to resolve the terrorist threat. Even al-Qaida, he maintains, can be negotiated with, provided the ultimate aspiration of a global caliphate of the Ummah is quietly "parked", just as the issue of a united Ireland was in the Northern Ireland negotiations; and, as ever, Palestine is the key. Taylor's skill as a journalist allows him to squeeze in a vast amount of context and astute analysis without losing sight of the individuals involved.