100 books like Truth and Repair

She Said takes readers behind the headlines of how Kantor and Twohey teamed up to break the Harvey Weinstein story. And what a story it is.

Despite being credibly accused of sexual abuse multiple times, Weinstein always managed to evade accountability. With the help of enablers at Miramax (and beyond), Weinstein preyed on women who worked for him or sought work from him for decades.

Until Kantor and Twohey persuaded several victims to go on the record at the same times and their New York Times front page article started a reckoning. This is a meticulous record of investigative reporting that contains many surprises even for those who believe they know the #MeToo story well.

Tarana Burke is the woman behind the “me too” movement and Unbound is her story.

In 2017 when #MeToo shattered the myth that sexual violence is rare, Burke had already been building the movement for over a decade. Unbound traces her growth as a community organizer and the founder of a survivor movement rooted in empathy.

Although one goal of the book is to correct the record of the “me too” origin story, Burke is more interested in a larger notion of justice. She writes movingly of the pervasiveness and damage of sexual violence, including in her own life, and the promise of healing contained in the words “me too.”

I like this book because it takes on the troubling theme of consent in the case where one person is an adolescent and the other a significantly older adult. I think in all cases of this power dynamic, the confusion a young person feels when she is eager for the love and attention of the older man blurs the meaning of consent for her.I know it did for me.

Yet the truth is a young teenager isn’t capable of consent; she is unaware of the price she’ll pay for what seems like love but is actually abuse. When the perpetrator is a well-liked or respected leader, like a coach or teacher, the confusion is worse because we are all led to believe this is a trustworthy person.

Michelle Bowdler’s piercing question pinpoints the hypocrisy of laws that often favor abusers rather than those they harm. This happens so routinely that survivors speak of two assaults: the abuse itself and the revictimization as they seek justice.

Bowdler was the victim of a serial rapist in Boston whose break-ins and assaults terrorized the city. After Bowdler reported the attack, she was assured that the crime would be investigated. Nothing of the sort happened. Is Rape a Crime? pulls back the curtain on how sexual assault victims are treated by law enforcement and concludes with a powerful demand for change.

This book is heartbreaking and enlightening.

Admittedly, I didn't know much about the Amish culture religion prior to reading this book, other than what I saw in Pennsylvania when I lived there, but I was always curious. After reading this book, I started to question the idea of ‘religious freedom’ in our country, that can so shield people who are abusing their freedom by exploiting women and children. 

Religion in its worst manifestation can be so damaging, which is so well explained in this book.

Laura McClusky’s investigation of conjugal abuse among a Mayan community in Belize is one of the most ethnographically compelling books I have read on lived experiences of domestic violence.

McClusky was motivated to write this book because most domestic violence research had been clinical or sociological and had focused solely on the experience of violence, often approaching the phenomenon in a “peopleless manner.”

Refreshingly, McClusky decided to focus on the emotions, desires, motivations, and personal experiences of living women more holistically, thus overcoming tendencies to reduce women to the experience of violence and granting them the recognition as agents of actions that they deserve.  

This is the best book ever written about the psychology of the male perpetrator in a trauma bond.

In this book, I was able to see into the mind of an abuser and no longer make excuses for them. I love how the author described the different types of abusers and how he explained how to leave a trauma bond.

I refer this book to every one of my patients.

I think this is a basic skills book from which I was able to refresh my own knowledge.

This is an excellent workbook for therapists dealing with domestic abuse. It shows the real statistics behind domestic abuse, and begins by debunking myths, then explores the long-term effects on the survivors including the cycle of abuse in families.

It itemises therapeutic approaches and how people can be helped. It explores ways in which people can be helped to reconnect with their own identity and find themselves again after the terrible period of trauma.

The story is told as a memoir in first person. What I like about this is that it tells of a period in a Derbyshire working class home in the 1940s and 1950s.

The description of the family environment is very realistic and one is drawn in immediately and carried along by the love in the home is and the playful the antics of the children. However, it soon develops into a novel of a young girl who runs away from that home because her mother becomes mentally ill and her father doesn’t know how to help his wife and ends up severely beating her.

It continues into what she does on the streets of London and how she eventually ends up in a women’s refuge. It is a lesson on how things can dramatically change.

This is a non-fiction book about how domestic abuse can easily turn into murder.

The author is an authority on cases of coercive control, stalking, and domestic abuse. Case studies are used frequently and the writing is clear and easy to read quickly. I found some of the concepts echoed some minor bullying that I was subjected to at school.

It begins with a typical scene where a victim of domestic abuse will not report the incident and will not get into the ambulance even though they are badly injured. The author says that it was this case which opened her eyes to the complexities of domestic abuse incidents.

The book debunks some common myths which perpetrators use as excuses, such as ‘crime of passion’. It describes eight stages of coercive control which can often lead to homicide. These are a whirlwind of commitment in the early stages of a… show more.