When the hijacked airliners flew into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York city, the need for explanation was almost as urgent and almost as immediate as the need for firemen. Since no one had time to do the research and be on that night’s six o’clock news, the need for explanation was filled by taking already-written books off the shelf, dusting them off and promoting them as if they had been written with an uncanny prescience. One such book, probably the most oft-cited book in this regard, was Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.