Jessica Stern Publishes New Book on Radovan Karadžić
My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide, the much anticipated new book by Jessica Stern, Research Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, has just been published and now available from HarperCollins.
My War Criminal is a mesmerizing, unsettling, and revelatory memoir of the two years Stern spent talking with Radovan Karadžić, who was responsible for the death of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica during the Bosnian War and who continues to be an inspiration for white nationalists around the globe. Stern brings to bear her incisive analysis and her own deeply considered reactions to her interactions with Karadzic, while also offering a deeply insightful and sometimes chilling account of the complex and even seductive powers of a magnetic leader—and what can happen when you spend many, many hours with that person.
The widely awaited book was described by Publishers Weekly as “eloquent and revelatory” and Kirkus Review calls it a “scrupulously researched work by a skilled interviewer…the author provides a subtle, powerful illustration of terror that resonates today, especially regarding the resurgent white supremacist movement. The deep, extensive footnotes and detailed timeline attest to Stern’s meticulous research. An utterly compelling chronicle from a master scholar and clear writer.”
John McLaughlin, Former Deputy Director and Acting Director of the CIA, writes that “My War Criminal is a riveting account full of edge-of-your-seat moments as Dr. Jessica Stern explores the boundaries of good and evil through hours of interviews with convicted mass murderer Radovan Karadžic. Complex emotions are unleashed on both sides as the interviewer circles a wily subject skilled at charm, obfuscation, misdirection, and intimidation—and Dr. Stern lays all of this out with extraordinary candor. Must reading for anyone interested in how a narcissistic leader can merge popular grievances and history to produce human tragedy on a massive scale.”
Prof. Jessica Stern is a Research Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. She is the coauthor with J.M. Berger of ISIS: The State of Terror; and the author of Denial: A Memoir of Terror; Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill; and The Ultimate Terrorists. She has held fellowships awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Erik Erikson Institute, and the MacArthur Foundation. She was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, a National Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. Stern has nearly completed her training as an Advanced Academic Candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. Learn more about her here.