Author declares war on critics

NEW YORK -- Caleb Carr is one author who reads his reviews. Get him mad and he'll even answer them. Get him really mad and he'll write one himself.

Best known for his historical novel, "The Alienist," Carr recently published "The Lessons of Terror," a short analysis written in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Carr is a contributing editor to Military History Quarterly.

Carr examines conflicts from ancient Rome to the present, and argues that wars waged deliberately against civilians backfire on the attackers.

Reviewing the book in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote that it was filled with "gross generalizations."

Salon.com's Laura Miller found that "when you try to apply Carr's forceful dictums to the situation at hand, they tend to become as slippery and elusive as a handful of live minnows."

While other critics liked "Lessons of Terror," the bad reviews apparently were bad enough to make Carr respond.

"Several reviews have made claims concerning my credibility that are, quite simply, libelous, and will be dealt with soon," Carr wrote in a self-review on Amazon.com.