摘要：Bartholomew Elias' Airport and Aviation Security is a welcome addition to a field crowded with quickly assembled, poorly researched textbooks. The author is an aviation policy specialist for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and also served as an investigator on the National Trans-portation Safety Board and a research psychologist for the U.S. Air Force. For the layperson attempting to understand the depth and breadth of avi-ation security, this is the solid foundation they need to begin (as an over-view, the book is spot on). However, the book's shortcomings emerge as the author attempts to flesh out details. Although a deeply flawed work, this book at present is the definitive work on its topic, standing head and shoulders above competitors.The book in an ambitious undertaking, vast in scope but perhaps a bit more than the author should have attempted to take on. The research is thorough and at times painstaking, drawing on a wide variety of source material, much of which is solid, but some of which is biased, detracting from the book's credibility. The book's main strength lies in its outline. The author provides the history of aviation security before the events of September 11, 2001 (9/11) to present the last few years in proper context. He accurately depicts 9/11, the U.S. response, and chal lenges the Bush Administration had to confront. However, the author fails to mention, even in passing, political interests in the policy and strategy arenas that have more to do with personal and political gain than national security. For example, former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-SD) pushed aggressively for federalization of the previously airline-contracted screener workforce, stating "when you federalize, you professionalize." His wife, a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Deputy Admin-istrator, was at that time a lobbyist for the airline industry, attempting to save the airlines money by bringing about a federalization of the screener workforce. An acknowledgement of this dynamic would have provided much-needed context for decisions made at the time
