Excerpt from The Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The significance of the Mecca uprising was missed at the time even by the most sharp-eyed observers. Too many other threats preoccupied the West. The seizure of the Grand Mosque–the first large-scale operation by an international jihadi movement in modern times–was shrugged off as a local incident, an anachronistic throwback to Arabia’s Bedouin past.

But with the benefit of hindsight, it is painfully clear: the countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and to the grisly Islamist violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq all began on that warm November morning, in the shade of the Kaaba.

Excerpted from The Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov Copyright © 2007 by Yaroslav Trofimov. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.