"Ballen, a former federal prosecutor and the founder and president of the non-profit research institute Terror Free Tomorrow, profiles six former jihadis in this provocative study. With the assistance of Saudi Arabian authorities and well-placed Pakistani journalists, Ballen interviewed more than 100 former jihadis during five years of research, focusing on six very different, very complex individuals whose lives were so different from Western conceptions of the terrorist that he felt compelled to tell their stories. The six include a mama's boy, a homosexual, a sexually abused dreamer, one-half of a "jihadi Romeo and Juliet," a homesick and gullible suicide bomber, and "Pakistan's most notorious terrorist you never heard of." The author's dynamic with terrorists is fascinating ("I was everything he hated: an American, a Jew, and once a prosecutor of terrorists like him"), and he culls fascinating observations from what motivates terrorists ("the story of Islamic radicals and terrorists... is as much about love as hate") and how they can be overcome ("they are, in fact, a small group that can be isolated and defeated"). An unprecedented and unusual look at Islamic radicalism."

"Those who still believe terrorists are mindless fanatics will find little evidence in these revealing, often touching interviews with six young Islamic men.

In despair when his lover was forced to marry another man, a young Arab enlisted in the Iraqi insurgency, found it tedious and returned home only to learn that she had run off to become a suicide bomber. She never returned. Another Saudi, an aimless dropout, galvanized by TV images of American guards humiliating Abu Ghraib prisoners (a priceless recruiting bonanza for terrorists), joined and became the first suicide bomber to survive his attack. Two subjects, one gay, both deeply religious, flirted with terrorism without signing up, but their stories cast a revealing light on an exotic, unfamiliar culture. Wildly cynical and boastful, a midlevel Pakistani terrorist drips contempt for America—by aiding Pakistan, we are financing and fighting terrorism simultaneously—but gives equal time to denouncing former comrades, Pakistani officers and even Taliban fighters and high officials for heartlessness, greed, corruption and an un-Islamic lack of humility. These stories clearly represent the cream of more than 100 interviews.

Ballen admits that they cannot reveal the motivation of all Islamic radicals, but few readers will deny that they illuminate the frustrations of young Islamic men living in repressive societies, alternatively fascinated and horrified by America."

Terrorists in Love shatters the dominant dispassionate treatment of modern day Islamic purveyors of death and destruction and instead offers a profoundly intimate portal into the fragile, emotional, even sexual factors that drive their behavior. Ballen blasts past the clichés about what animates terrorists and takes readers to places that no one has gone before. The profiles and revelations in this book are at times as uncomfortable as they are vital to appreciate what lies in the mind of some terrorists. I couldn’t put the book down.”

In a fast moving, absorbing and at times shocking narrative, Ballen destroys stereotypes and defies conventional wisdom by allowing the ‘enemies’ to speak for themselves. America, meet the terrorists, really for the first time. And if you find yourself in the strange position of empathizing with them, don’t recoil in horror, for you might just have stumbled upon that unexpected insight that could help design a more effective response.”