Ecco to Publish ISIS: The State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger

Posted on September 18, 2014

The rise of the terrorist group ISIS seemed to come out of nowhere. One minute no one had heard of them. Then suddenly they were releasing horrifying videos of beheadings of journalists and aid workers and threatening anyone who doesn't agree with their insanely violent agenda.

Publisher are scrambling to get terrorist experts on board to meet the demand for knowledge about this new security threat. HarperCollins' imprint Ecco has acquired the rights to the book ISIS: The State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger. The nonfiction book will be released on January 27, 2015.

Jessica Stern lectures on terrorism at Harvard University and sits on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. She is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Denial: A Memoir of Terror, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill.

J.M. Berger owns the website Intelwire and is the author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam which delves into the American jihad movement in which young Americans are recruited into terrorist organizations abroad.

The new book takes on the rise of ISIS: where it came from, who's running the organization and what it has planned in its quest for a new Caliphate and Islamic State based on religion, not on traditional geographical borders. Using open source intelligence and their own intelligence and law enforcement sources, the authors attempt to lay out what is known about ISIS and what it's rise may mean for the West.

One of the most bizarre and troubling aspects of ISIS is the group's savvy about social media. It uses Twitter and Youtube to get its message of terror across quickly. These aren't old guys in caves. They are young and apparently educated. They even tweeted about Robin Williams' death, which is something Al Qaeda never would do. Stern says, "We've been students of terrorism for many years, and yet we've never seen a terrorist group like ISIS. Its brutality, its sophisticated use of social media, its acquisition of territory, and its ability to attract foreign fighters is unprecedented in the history of terrorism."

The book will discuss ISIS' use of video for recruitment and for terror, and how certain segments of the American population are being targeted with these videos. This is sure to be one of many such books hitting bookstores.