Denial: A Memoir [9780061626661]

Overview

“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.”

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.”

Instead of feeling terror, she studied it—now, decades later, she turns that same unflinching gaze upon herself.

• From Personal Trauma to Professional Calling: Discover the astonishing connection between Stern’s terrifying unsolved rape at fifteen and her life’s work studying the world’s most violent men.
• The Psychology of PTSD: An unflinching look at post-traumatic stress disorder, memory, and dissociation from an author who finds the symptoms in her own life after decades of studying them in others.
• Reopening an Unsolved Crime: Follow the gripping police investigation as a thirty-three-year-old cold case is reopened, revealing shocking truths about the perpetrator and the crime.
• Communal and Personal Denial: A powerful examination of how a community, a family, and a victim can become complicit in forgetting—and the staggering cost of silence.