SITE is pleased to announce that Saints and Soldiers, the new book by SITE Executive Director Rita Katz, has won the Grand Prize for the 2022 Nellie Bly Book Award.
The award is dedicated to “Journalistic Non-Fiction, Investigative Works, and In-depth Reports on Issues and Societal Topics.”
“I am beyond honored to win the Nelly Bly Book Award,” Katz said. “I put so much of myself into Saints and Soldiers, from my own personal experiences to the research and digital artifacts I’ve spent decades compiling. To see my work received the way I hoped is immensely validating.”
In Saints and Soldiers (Columbia University Press), Katz reveals a new generation of terrorist movements that don’t just use the Internet, but exist almost entirely on it. She provides a vivid view from the trenches, spanning edgy video game chat groups to what ISIS and Far-Right mass-shooters in El Paso, Orlando and elsewhere unwittingly reveal between the lines of their manifestos. Katz shows how the online cultures of these movements—far more than their ideologies and leaders—create today’s terrorists and shape how they commit “real world” violence. From ISIS to QAnon, Saints and Soldiers pinpoints the approaches needed for a new era in which arrests and military campaigns alone cannot stop these never-before-seen threats.
"Saints and Soldiers…is detailed, impressive and portends a troublesome future for free societies around the world."
- General Doug Brown USA (ret) 7th Commander US Special Operations Command
"…a highly original, immensely authoritative, and absolutely compelling depiction of the violent Far-Right extremist movement today, its recent evolution, and likely future trajectory."
- Bruce Hoffman, author of Inside Terrorism
"Penned by one of the country’s most astute observers of extremist movements, Saints and Soldiers is both a warning and a call to action."
- Joby Warrick, author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
"Rita Katz provides a detailed, compelling, and disturbing account of how online extremist cultures create terrorists and shape the violence they commit."
- Daniel Byman, author of Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism
