The Islamic State, referred to as ISIS, exploded into the public eye in 2014 with startling speed and shocking brutality. They have captured the imagination from the global jihadist motion, getting recruits in unprecedented amounts and wreaking bloody devastation having a sadistic glee which has alienated even the hardcore terrorists of its mother or father company, al Qaeda.

Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, two of America’s leading specialists on terrorism, dissect the new model for violent extremism that ISIS about ISIS: The State of Terror offers leveraged into an empire of loss of life in Iraq and Syria, and a global network that is rapidly expanding in the centre East, North Africa and around the world.

ISIS: The State of Terror traces the ideological improvements that the group deploys to recruit unprecedented numbers of Westerners, the structure of its infamous snuff videos, as well as the technological tools it exploits on social networking to broadcast its atrocities, and its own recruiting pitch towards the globe, including its success at attracting thousands of Western adherents. The writers examine ISIS’s predatory misuse of females and children and its use of horror to control globe leaders and its own adherents since it builds its twisted society. The authors offer a much-needed perspective on what world leaders should prioritize and respond to ISIS’s deliberate and insidious provocations.