No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us - Paperback

by Rachel Louise Snyder (Author)

WINNER OF THE HILLMAN PRIZE FOR BOOK JOURNALISM, THE HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD, AND THE LUKAS WORK-IN-PROGRESS AWARD * A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST * LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST * ABA SILVER GAVEL AWARD FINALIST * KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY: Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, BookRiot, Economist, New York Times Staff Critics

"A seminal and breathtaking account of why home is the most dangerous place to be a woman . . . A tour de force." -Eve Ensler

"Terrifying, courageous reportage from our internal war zone." -Andrew Solomon

"Extraordinary." -New York Times,"Editors' Choice"

"Gut-wrenching, required reading." -Esquire

"Compulsively readable . . . It will save lives." -Washington Post

"Essential, devastating reading." -Cheryl Strayed, New York Times Book Review

The book that changed the conversation about domestic violence-an award-winning journalist's intimate investigation of the abuse that happens behind closed doors, now with a new afterword by the author.

We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything at all to do with us, despite the World Health Organization deeming it a "global epidemic." In America, domestic violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, and yet it remains locked in silence, even as its tendrils reach unseen into so many of our most pressing national issues, from our economy to our education system, from mass shootings to mass incarceration to #MeToo. We still have not taken the true measure of this problem.

In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder gives context for what we don't know we're seeing. She frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths-that if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and most insidiously that violence inside the home is a private matter, sealed from the public sphere and disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

Author Biography

Rachel Louise Snyder is the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade, the novel What We've Lost is Nothing, and No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, and on NPR. No Visible Bruises was awarded the Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, and the New York Public Library's Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. It was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Award, and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, and was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times. Snyder is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Journalism at American University, and in 2020-2021 she will be a Guggenheim Fellow. Follow her on Twitter at @RLSWrites