DENIAL: A Memoir of Terror and Its Aftermath by Jessica Stern



“Jessica Stern has always had the gift of disappearing into the lives and minds of terrorists. In this book, she faces the greater challenge of her own. The layers of abuse she has encountered, her tender matter-of-factness, her refusal of self-pity in favor of insatiable curiosity—these are some of her gifts born of trauma. This book will allow people into parts of themselves they did not have access to, or even knew they had. Parts full of rage, of terror, of pride in their own detachment. It will allow their hearts to begin to break. For anyone who has lived at proximity to violence, it is one of the most necessary accounts of our time.”- Eliza Griswold, journalist and author of WIDEAWAKE FIELD

 

“A memorable, powerful and deeply courageous book, DENIAL is also a riveting read. Stern brings a unique combination of insight, empathy, and acumen to bear in helping us to understand the perpetrators of violence. With devastating honesty she explores the impact of trauma on victims and those close to them, and the costs of denial for both.”- Louise Richardson, author of WHAT TERRORISTS WANT

“An unflinchingly courageous self-examination of the impact of trauma on an individual’s unfolding life. Through her riveting and brilliantly told story, Jessica Stern lays out the impact of trauma on an individual’s ways of experiencing the world, how trauma is transmitted across generations, and how severe trauma can be adaptively transformed. 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.”
- Edward R. Shapiro, M.D., Medical Director/CEO, Austen Riggs Center; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine

“Wonderfully compassionate, absorbing reading for anyone.”
   — Booklist 
 
“In this skillfully wrought, powerful study, a terrorism expert, national security adviser, and lecturer at Harvard, returns to a definitive episode of terror in her own early life and traces its grim, damaging ramifications… Stern’s work is a strong, clear-eyed, elucidating study of the profound reverberations of trauma.” - Publisher's Weekly