The Inheritance

A stunning work of narrative nonfiction that traces the lives of nine Americans over three decades, offering a vivid account of a nation in crisis—from award-winning New York Times Magazine writer Janet Reitman “Richly empathetic, morally complex . . . a particle collider for the forces of the age . . . [Reitman] pushes back against one of the worst ideas that surged after Sept. 11: Trying to understand others is endorsement or complicity. Thus emerges an origin story for the present.”—The New York TimesA thrill-seeking former Navy pilot chases adventure in Afghanistan, while in suburbia, his teenage son spirals into extremism. The grandson of African freedom fighters joins the FBI to save America from terrorism and ends up terrorizing the African immigrants he’d sworn to protect. A young Marine who sees himself as a true-blue American goes to war in Iraq, comes home broken, and is reborn as white nationalist. An idealistic young attorney defends a Palestinian engineer she believes is wrongly accused of funding Hamas. These four people, and five others, struggle to find their way in a country reimagining itself in the wake of 9/11. In The Inheritance, Janet Reitman, the bestselling author of Inside Scientology, delivers an intimate and urgent account of American disillusionment—and a paean to hope. From the bucolic suburbs of Boston to the immigrant enclaves of Dallas, from the deserts of Iraq to the encrypted chatrooms that fuel hatred and extremism, The Inheritance unfolds in repeating narratives of people moving through the decades, from the end of the Reagan era to the present day, painting a sweeping and deeply affective portrait of how a country revered for its democratic ideals became a nation defined by its fears. Rigorously reported and brimming with novelistic detail, The Inheritance reveals the hidden cost of the war on terror, exposing the psychic wounds that haunt us to this day.

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