“Denial is one of the most important books I have read in a decade....Brave, life-changing, and gripping as a thriller….A tour de force.”—Naomi Wolf
One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jessica Stern has subtitled her book Denial, “A Memoir of Terror.” A brave and astonishingly frank examination of her own unsolved rape at the age of fifteen, Denial investigates how the rape and its aftermath came to shape Stern’s future and her work. The author of the New York Times Notable Book Terror in the Name of God, Jessica Stern brilliantly explores the nature of evil in an extraordinary volume that Louise Richardson, author of What Terrorists Want, calls, “Memorable, powerful and deeply courageous…a riveting read.”
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Denial: A Memoir
“Denial is one of the most important books I have read in a decade....Brave, life-changing, and gripping as a thriller….A tour de force.”—Naomi Wolf
One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jessica Stern has subtitled her book Denial, “A Memoir of Terror.” A brave and astonishingly frank examination of her own unsolved rape at the age of fifteen, Denial investigates how the rape and its aftermath came to shape Stern’s future and her work. The author of the New York Times Notable Book Terror in the Name of God, Jessica Stern brilliantly explores the nature of evil in an extraordinary volume that Louise Richardson, author of What Terrorists Want, calls, “Memorable, powerful and deeply courageous…a riveting read.”
“Denial is one of the most important books I have read in a decade....Brave, life-changing, and gripping as a thriller….A tour de force.”—Naomi Wolf
One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jessica Stern has subtitled her book Denial, “A Memoir of Terror.” A brave and astonishingly frank examination of her own unsolved rape at the age of fifteen, Denial investigates how the rape and its aftermath came to shape Stern’s future and her work. The author of the New York Times Notable Book Terror in the Name of God, Jessica Stern brilliantly explores the nature of evil in an extraordinary volume that Louise Richardson, author of What Terrorists Want, calls, “Memorable, powerful and deeply courageous…a riveting read.”
Jessica Stern is a leading expert on terrorism and trauma. Stern is the coauthor with J. M. Berger of ISIS: The State of Terror and the author of Denial: A Memoir of Terror and Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, selected by the New York Times as a notable book of the year. She has held fellowships awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Erikson Institute, and the MacArthur Foundation. She was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, a national fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a fellow of the World Economic Forum. Stern is a research professor at Boston University. Prior to teaching, she worked in government, serving on President Clinton’s National Security Council Staff and as an analyst at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
What People are Saying About This
Howard Gardner
“Jessica Stern has written a remarkable book, unlike any that I’ve read. This deeply personal and often painful reflection documents the costs of personal, familial, and community silence as well as the liberating effects of truthful testimony.”
Louise Richardson
“A memorable, powerful and deeply courageous book, DENIAL is also a riveting read... With devastating honesty [Stern] explores the impact of trauma on victims and those close to them, and the costs of denial for both.”
Naomi Wolf
“One of the most important books I have read in a decade….Brave, life changing and gripping as a thriller...A tour de force.”
Susanna Moore
“[A] harrowing memoir of a girl whom trauma has taught to distrust herself and who learns to live with the idea of her helplessness...an appeal to compassion and forgiveness, rather than a condemnation of the destructive impulses that haunt each of us.”
Eliza Griswold
“[Denial] will allow people into parts of themselves they didn’t ven knew they had. Parts full of rage, of terror, of pride in their own detachment... For anyone who has lived at proximity to violence, it is one of the most necessary accounts of our time.”
Bessel van der Kolk
“A masterpiece. A remarkable human journey from confusion and doubt to clarity and perspective.”
Edward R. Shapiro
“An unflinchingly courageous self-examination... riveting and brilliantly told story... The book will be illuminating for victims and survivors of trauma, those who work or live with them, family members with generational histories of trauma, and for those who care about how our histories shape our lives.”
