3 Review(s)

Drawing on their unusual access to intelligence sources and material, law enforcement, and groundbreaking research into open source intelligence, Jessica Stern and J M Berger outline the origins of ISIS (known variously as ISIL and IS) as the formidable terrorist group it has quickly become.ISIS: The State of Terror delves into the ghoulish pornography of pro-jihadi videos, the seductive appeal of jihadi chic and the startling effectiveness of the Islamic States use of social media as a means of luring and recruiting citizens from countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Franceusing recent examples such as Douglas McCain, the American citizen from Minnesota who joined ISIS and died in combat fighting on the side of the Islamic State. Although the picture Stern and Berger paint is bleak, State of Terror also offers well-informed thoughts on potential government responses to ISIS most importantly, emphasizing that we must alter our present conceptions of terrorism and react to the rapidly changing jihadi landscape, both online and off, as quickly as the terrorists do.ISIS: The State of Terror is not only a compelling account of the evolution of a terrorist organization, but also a necessary book that attempts to answer the question of what our next move as a country, as a government, as the world should be. About the Author Jessica Stern is a Lecturer on Terrorism at Harvard University and serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. She was a member of the National Security Council Staff in 1994-95, and worked as an analyst at Livermore Lab. She is the author of Denial: A Memoir of Terror (selected by the Washington Post as a best book of the year) Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and The Ultimate Terrorists.J.M. Berger is the author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, a critically acclaimed history of the American jihadist movement, and editor of Beatings and Bureaucracy: The Founding Memos of al Qaeda. He is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy magazine, where he wrote in 2013 about his lengthy online interactions with American jihadist Omar Hammami. His website,Intelwire.com, has published thousands of declassified documents on the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing.