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The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls
by Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw
What happens after you click Tweet? The heart-stopping definitive account of the mission to rescue hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls whose abduction ignited a global social media campaign and a dramatic worldwide intervention.
In the spring of 2014, millions of Twitter users, including some of the world's most famous people, unwittingly helped turn a group of 276 schoolgirls abducted by a little-known Islamist sect into a central prize in the global War on Terror by retweeting a call for their release: #BringBackOurGirls. With just four words, their tweets launched an army of would-be liberators. Soldiers and drones, spies, mercenaries, and glory hunters descended into an obscure conflict that few understood, in a remote part of Nigeria that had barely begun to use the internet.
When hostage talks and military intervention failed, the schoolgirls were forced to take survival into their own hands. As their days in captivity dragged into years, the young women learned to withstand hunger, disease, and torment, and became witnesses and victims of unspeakable brutality. Many of the girls were Christians who refused to take the one path offered them—converting to their captors' fundamentalist creed. In secret, they sang hymns, and kept a diary, relying on their faith and friendships to stay alive.
Bring Back Our Girls unfolds across four continents, from the remote forests of northern Nigeria to the White House; from clandestine meetings in Khartoum safe houses to century-old luxury hotels on picturesque lakes in the Swiss Alps. A twenty-first century story that plumbs the promise and peril of an era whose politics are fueled by the power of hashtag advocacy, this urgent and engrossing work of investigative journalism reveals the unpredictable interconnectedness of our butterfly-wings world, where a few days of online activism can bring years of offline consequences for people continents away.
"[A] riveting chronicle of the 2014 kidnapping of a group of Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram...Written with compassion and insight, this deeply investigated account brings renewed attention to an ongoing tragedy." - Publishers Weekly
"[T[his exploration of the unintended impact of social media activism is both poignant and relevant. A nuanced investigation into the humanitarian realities beyond the viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign." - Kirkus Reviews
"Everyone should read the testimonies of the Chibok girls who survived the capture. We need to help with efforts to liberate all of them and become more responsible for women and girls' protection in conflicts." - Malala Yousafzai
"This intimate and riveting account demonstrates the power of sustained international pressure in the name of human rights. Most importantly, it serves as a testament to the strength of the Chibok girls who resisted their captors and bravely asserted their humanity in the face of violent subjugation." - Nadia Murad, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize
"This account of the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls and their courage and fortitude through the unspeakable brutality of their captivity is a nail-biter about survival told with Hitchcockian flair. Packed with their personal testimonies, along with fresh details of the hunt for them by a team of Swiss negotiators, Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw have written a work of brilliant journalism." - Lesley Stahl, correspondent, 60 Minutes
This information about Bring Back Our Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joe Parkinson is the Africa Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal and a Pulitzer Prize finalist currently based in Johannesburg. One of the Journal's most seasoned foreign correspondents, he has reported from more than forty countries, and his work has won numerous international awards.
Drew Hinshaw is a senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
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