Anna’s gaze roved over the tightly clustered zinc roofs glinting in the sunlight like fish scales on the beach or, Ted thought, pieces of armor left scattered on a battlefield. (Stairways. Small Spiral Notebook, Spring 2006.)

How is it that so many young men and women born and raised in secular, post-Christian, democratic societies in Western Europe (or the U.S.) acquire the passion to kill and die for Islam?