Once again, there is nothing to say and too much to.

A lone gunman, a massacre among people going about their everyday lives and the usual hand-ringing and finger-pointing.

Although I must say Donald Trump deserves our heartiest “congratulations” for putting a new spin on opportunism – or should that be a new low.

“Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism,” he tweeted. “I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!”

And just how is he “right”? In a PBS town hall recently, President Barack Obama responded to an edgy question about refugees by observing that the real terrorist threat to the United States is not from refugees – who are vetted extensively – but from “tourists” and American citizens who are radicalized, like Omar Mateen, who murdered 50 people and injured 53 in an Orlando nightclub – the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. ...

Two richly layered new books from Thames & Hudson capture the contrast between the human figure in Persian art and the figure in Indian art.

“Persian Painting: The Arts of the Book and Portraiture” by Adel T. Adamova and Manijeh Bayani (552 pages, $50) reproduces in paperback for the first time shimmering illuminated manuscripts, miniature paintings and decorated book bindings from the 11th through early 20th centuries. Illustrations from such works as Firdawsi’s “Shah-nameh” (“The Persian Book of Kings”) and Nizami’s “Khamsah” draw on The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait.

“The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100-1900” by B.N. Goswamy (570 pages, $50) covers roughly the same period. How these books cover these periods, however, is vastly different. ...

Education – the antidote to terrorism

The figure in Persian and Indian art: Different perspectives from two new books