The Concord Bookshop - Established 1940

Please join us for a special event, Thursday, June 24th, as we welcome Jessica Stern, reading from her memoir, "Denial: A Memoir of Terror"

One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder investigates her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault at the hands of a serial rapist, and, in so doing, examines the horrors of trauma and denial.

Jessica Stern, one of the foremost experts on terrorism, is a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. In 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on trauma and violence.

She has authored TERROR IN THE NAME OF GOD: Why Religious Militants Kill, selected by the New York Times as a notable book of the year; THE ULTIMATE TERRORISTS; and numerous articles on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. She served on President Clinton’s National Security Council Staff in 1994–95. Stern is a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. She was named a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, fellow of the World Economic Forum, and a Harvard MacArthur Fellow. She has a BS from Barnard College in chemistry, an MA from MIT in chemical engineering/technology policy, and a PhD from Harvard University in public policy.

Jessica was included in Time magazine’s series profiling 100 people with bold ideas. The film, “The Peacemaker”, with Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, was based on a fictional version of Jessica’s work at the National Security Council. Her next book, DENIAL: A Memoir of Terror, will be published in June 2010 by Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

 

Denial: A Memoir of Terror (Hardcover)

By Jessica Stern

$24.99

ISBN-13: 9780061626654
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Ecco, 7/2010

Other Editions of this Title

One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder investigates her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault at the hands of a serial rapist, and, in so doing, examines the horrors of trauma and denial.

“I have been quiet, and I have listened all my life. But now, I will finally speak.”

Alone in an unlocked house in a safe neighborhood in the suburban town of Concord, MA, two obedient, good girls, Jessica Stern, 15, and her sister, 14, were raped on the night of October 1, 1973. When they reported the crime, the police were skeptical. Their father, away on business, did not return for three more days.

Following the example of her family, Stern—who lost her mother at the age of three—denied her pain and kept striving to achieve. But while her career took off, her success hinged on her symptoms. After her ordeal, she could not feel fear in normally frightening situations. Stern thought she’d disassociated from the trauma altogether, until a request took her back to that night more than 30 years earlier.

The world-class social scientist and expert on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder began her own investigation, with the help of a devoted police lieutenant, to find the truth about her rapist, the town of Concord, her own family, and her own mind. The result is DENIAL, a candid and deeply intimate look at a life, a trauma, and its aftermath.

---