BOOK REVIEW Emotionally Engaging: Responding to and Researching Survivors of Sexual Assault Talking About Sexual Assault: Society’ s Response to Survivors. By Sarah E. Ullman, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2010. 209pp. $69.95 (Hardback) ISBN: 978-1-4338-0741-1. Miranda A. H. Horvath Published online: 22 December 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 This book took me by surprise because despite being academically rigorous, as one has come to expect from Sarah Ullman’s work over the years (e.g. Ullman 1998; Ullman et al. 1999; Ullman and Brecklin 2003), it is intensely personal. The honesty with which Ullman has developed this text should serve as a wake-up call to everyone researching or working with survivors of sexual violence. We cannot, and indeed I would go so far as to say should not, be immune to the devastation that a sexual assault inflicts on our lives. Ullman describes the purpose of this book as two-fold: firstly to “highlight the knowledge uncovered by research- ers about how women talk about sexual assaults they experience and the responses they receive from others in American Society” and secondly to “show how support providers experience disclosure, as well as factors that influence how they respond to the disclosing survivor” (2010, p.5). The book is organised into seven chapters which act as a funnel to focus the reader from the broader contextual issues to the more personal and specific. In chapter 1 Ullman provides a recent social historical context of rape and attitudes toward rape. I was interested to see that like a number of other books and papers in recent years, my own included (see for example Horvath and Brown 2009; Konradi 2007; Lovett et al. 2007), Ullman draws on Susan Estrich’s(1987) concept of the “Real Rape” stereotype. Despite more than 20 years having passed since its inception it remains one of the most powerful and pervasive stereotypes about rape internation- ally. Chapter one also contains a very helpful section that summarises a vast amount of literature on the variables that influence individual attitudes and beliefs about rape. This section will be of great use to students and practitioners who want an accessible starting point for thinking about these issues. Chapter 2 is a very good example of how to draw out a key issue, in this case the tension between the framing of rape as a personal individual issue as opposed to a public political one, whilst providing a concise but clear account of the multiple underlying debates. The account of theories of rape and women’s disclosure (including sociological, feminist, psychological and ecological) interwoven with first, second and third wave feminism was comprehensive but at a rather high level, so I would encourage the readers who are new to these topics to go to the original texts Ullman cites to develop their thinking and understanding of these issues (e.g. Firestone 1970; hooks 1981; MacKinnon 1987; Russell 1974). A convincing case is made in this chapter for development of Liang et al. (2005) ecological model of help-seeking in response to intimate partner violence for sexual assault. As it integrates individual and social factors, which are often neglected or treated in isolation as Ullman highlights earlier in the chapter. Chapter 3 begins to bring victims voices to the fore, drawing on numerous studies she and others have con- ducted over many recent years (e.g. Campbell et al. 2001; Thompson et al. 2007; Ullman 1999). This chapter provides a review of the research on disclosure of sexual assault, responses to disclosure and factors related to the social reactions survivors receive from others. The importance of a victim being able to tell someone about what happened to them but perhaps much more than that the significance of how the person/people they tell respond is paramount. This M. A. H. Horvath (*) Middlesex University, London, UK e-mail: m.horvath@mdx.ac.uk Sex Roles (2011) 65:137–139 DOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9916-x