Publisher Description
The Islamic State, known as ISIS, exploded into the public eye in 2014 with startling speed and shocking brutality. It has captured the imagination of the global jihadist movement, attracting recruits in unprecedented numbers and wreaking bloody destruction with a sadistic glee that has alienated even the hardcore terrorists of its parent organization, al Qaeda.
Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, two of America’s leading experts on terrorism, dissect the new model for violent extremism that ISIS has leveraged into an empire of death in Iraq and Syria, and an international network that is rapidly expanding in the Middle East, North Africa and around the world.
ISIS: The State of Terror traces the ideological innovations that the group deploys to recruit unprecedented numbers of Westerners, the composition of its infamous snuff videos, and the technological tools it exploits on social media to broadcast its atrocities, and its recruiting pitch to the world, including its success at attracting thousands of Western adherents. The authors examine ISIS’s predatory abuse of women and children and its use of horror to manipulate world leaders and its own adherents as it builds its twisted society. The authors offer a much-needed perspective on how world leaders should prioritize and respond to ISIS’s deliberate and insidious provocations.
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About the Authors
Jessica Stern lectures on terrorism and is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. She holds a doctorate in public policy from Harvard and served as a staff member at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. A 2009–2010 Guggenheim Fellow, she was selected by Time in 2001 as one of seven thinkers whose innovative ideas will change the world. Stern is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Terror in the Name of God and The Ultimate Terrorists. She lives with her husband and son in Massachusetts.
J. M. Berger is a researcher, analyst, and writer covering extremism, with a special focus on extremist activities in the United States and extremist use of social media. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, the only definitive history of the United States jihadist movement; and coauthor of ISIS: The State of Terror. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, the CTC Sentinel, the New York Daily News, and the Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and the National Geographic Channel. Berger has discussed terrorism and extremism on CNN, Fox News, and many other radio and television outlets.
About Ray Porter
Ray Porter has garnered two Audie nominations as well as several Earphones Awards and enthusiastic reviews for his sparkling narration of audiobooks. A fifteen-year veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has also appeared in numerous films and television shows.