Among citizens and scholars in many parts of the world, concern about political violence has been intense since the United States declared a war on terror after 9/11. In this volume, T. David Mason reminds us that, tragically, insurgency was common in the last half of the twentieth century, and he explores a question that remains fundamental: Why, when rebel victory is uncertain at best and the risks large, do people rebel? He probes this question primarily with respect to peasants in Latin America, but his answers are more broadly relevant as well.

In the second chapter of the book, Mason provides an overview of theories of revolution and, in the following four chapters, describes in greater detail conditions provoking political violence. These conditions include dependent development, social and economic dislocation in the countryside, and the concomitant erosion of the stability afforded by patron–client ties; the capacity of social movements to provide selective incentives to peasants who join the rebellion; and weak, even “protection racket” states that are unable to respond effectively to a guerrilla challenge. In an argument with important policy implications, the author emphasizes that state repression, in particular repression of nonviolent political action, is likely to lose peasants' hearts and minds to the insurgency. He highlights “the counterinsurgency dilemma”: Soldiers, seeking to survive against a movement about which intelligence is limited, “engage in overkill” and “drive otherwise neutral peasants into the arms of the rebels” (pp. 155–56).

Mason's analysis in these chapters is valuable. He writes clearly and assumes little prior knowledge of the topic; his work is accessible to students. Influenced by rational choice perspectives, the author focuses on what is logical and what is illogical, and resolutely asks the key question: Why? He also frequently highlights the negative impact of dramatic population growth in Third World countries, a factor that to date has often been neglected.

Mason's analysis is not particularly ambitious, however. He is synthesizing traditional scholarly theories, rather than advancing a new theory. Although he shows that socioeconomic deprivation, the political opportunity structure, and an ineffective state are all important to the rise of insurgencies, he does not build a model explicitly delineating the roles and relationships of these factors. Although he acknowledges that “international forces” are “central” (p. 55), the United States is rarely mentioned as an actor in Third World conflicts. Mason does not incorporate recent theoretical explanations by such scholars as Timothy Wickham-Crowley (Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America, 1992) or Cynthia McClintock (Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1998), which do highlight the interplay among these factors. Nor does he consider sufficiently the role of revolutionary organization and ideology; he does not discuss the argument that peasants may find moral and emotional incentives for participation in an insurgency, cogently advanced by Elisabeth Jean Wood (Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador, 2003).

Chapters 8 and 9 focus on the insurgencies in El Salvador and Peru, respectively. Mason describes the harsh conditions that provoked the Faribundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru. For El Salvador, he highlights the rise of export agriculture and the concomitant displacement of peasants; the emergence of a “protection racket” state; the mobilization of the poor by progressive Catholic Church groups; and, in particular, the escalating state repression against these and other nonviolent groups, which gradually pushed them toward armed rebellion. For Peru, the author describes effectively the country's rural inequality, pointing out the differences between the export agriculture in the enterprises on Peru's coast and the subsistence farming in the indigenous communities in the country's highlands. He also emphasizes the counterproductive response of the Peruvian state to the Shining Path; during 1983–84, Peru's security forces killed thousands of innocent people and fanned the flames of insurgency.

In various respects, however, Mason's pair of case studies is problematical. He does not clarify why he selected the two cases, or to what extent they are representative of the universe of insurgencies in the Third World. He emphasizes similarities between the rise of the FMLN in El Salvador and the Shining Path in Peru, despite critical differences between the two. Indeed, some scholars of the Shining Path—see, for example, David Scott Palmer, “Rebellion in Rural Peru: The Origins and Evolution of Sendero Luminoso,” Comparative Politics 18 (January 1986)—have deemed sui generis this unusually savage and fanatical movement, launched from a highlands province against a nominally democratic state. One of the similarities highlighted by Mason is that the movements occurred despite land reforms in both countries. However, the differences between these two reforms—the Salvadoran was initiated after the emergence of the FMLN and limited by the politics of the war, while the Peruvian was initiated before the emergence of the Shining Path and limited by a paucity of good land—were great.

Most problematically, although I agree with Mason that state repression of an opposition social movement has often been a catalyst for rebellion, and certainly was in El Salvador, he exaggerates this factor in the Peruvian case. Although the Peruvian government's indiscriminate repression during 1983–84 was tragic and counterproductive, it did not provoke an opposition movement to violence; Sendero Luminoso was savage and strong in highlands Peru prior to 1983–84 (see Steve J. Stern, ed., Shining and Other Paths, 1998).

The question asked in Caught in the Crossfire is among the most important of the contemporary era, and the answers provided are thoughtful. The mix of traditional theories of revolution with rational choice perspectives yields interesting insights throughout the book. Its conclusion assesses concisely and carefully the reasons why revolutionary violence might diminish in the twenty-first century—and reasons why it might not. However, Mason is not highly rigorous; his theoretical framework is not innovative, and his research design is inchoate. His research experience in both El Salvador and Peru appears limited, and complexities about the trajectory of the Shining Path in particular are slighted.