Reign of Terror

reporter Tram Nguyen that people who wore hijab, like her mother, felt as if they had a bullseye on their forehead. Hate crimes against Muslims or those, like Sikhs, per­ceived to be Muslims by whites uninterested in distinctions skyrocketed from 28 incidents in 2000 to 481 in the final months of 2001. A generation of Arab and Desi children were called Osama by white classmates. With racism came conspiracy. False rumors spread that Jews who worked in the World Trade Center warned one another to stay home on 9/11. A durable conspiracy theory called 9/11 trutherism, which took root on both the far left and the far right, held that the towers were destroyed by a treason­ous globalist government that sought to gin up an imperial war. Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC complex, admitted . . . that he and the NYFD decided to pull WTC 7, wrote a rising conspiracist named Alex Jones, who twisted Silverstein s words. More respectable versions of the post 9/11 fury were no less vicious. Commentators, and hardly only conser­vative ones, pathologized Arabs and Muslims, whose critiques of America were proof of their conspiratorial thinking. Within days of 9/11, the right-wing radio host Dennis Prager told the Fox News host Bill O Reilly, It is very sad to say, but a significant percentage of the Muslim world hates us. Before September ended, O Reilly urged, I think we should put troops on the border right now. Enemies were everywhere.

A Palestinian man named Adham Amin Hassoun worked at a Miami technology company. Born in Lebanon, Hassoun had lived through the horror of the Lebanese civil war. A youth spent surviving bombings, beat­ings, and even kidnappings taught him both the fragility o

Slate

" The first major work to consider the War on Terror in its entirety, Reign of Terror documents the last 20 years of state-sponsored violence at a blistering pace, creating a near-constant cycle of recollection and frustration for the reader. Ackerman s real achievement is a commitment to scale, an expansiveness that encourages readers to see the long view. . . . Ackerman has sketched a chilling first draft of this part of American history, and he has done so with an implicit challenge: how do we make it right?
Los Angeles Review of Books

Even readers who think they already know all there is about the legacy of 9/11 will find Ackerman s incisive book an eye-opening experience.
Variety

"Attempting the near impossible . . . Ackerman offers a book stuffed to the brim with details. . . . A deeper-than-headlines take. . . . This book does a masterful job communicating how nothing is as it seems."
Booklist (starred review)

"Ackerman delivers a tour-de-force about the transformation of the United States in the two decades since the September 11 attacks, that thoroughly and comprehensively examines how the post-9/11 security state has engulfed society. . . . An essential work that encapsulates the trajectory of American politics in the first two decades of the 21st century, and the lasting impact on everyday life."
Library Journal (starred review)

"Ackerman capably connects seemingly disparate elements without forcing issues so that readers will see how such matters as the Branch Davidian siege of 1993 helped fuel White supremacist movements today. . . . An intelligent, persuasive book about events that are all too current."
Kirkus Reviews

"Spencer Ackerman s brilliant, discerning Reign of Terror initiates the urgent process of truth and reconciliation with the ugly facts of a 'War on Terror' that condemned a young 21st century America to the darkness of a surveillance society driven by the militarization of everyday life and dependent upon surveillance capitalism for pervasive monitoring and control of people. Ackerman is at the top of his game, revealing with vivid detail, investigative force, and unswerving moral clarity how the reign of terror rained on us, replacing freedom with fear and neighborliness with suspicion, as it poisoned cherished principles, diminished rights, and weakened democratic institutions. Every citizen and lawmaker yearning for a joyful inclusive democratic future must confront this toxic legacy and its chokehold on our expectations and our politics. That journey begins here with this courageous, necessary book."
Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

"Journalists are said to write the first draft of history and Spencer Ackerman has been one of the most important reporters in exposing the horrors, abuses and wars as they unfolded in the post-9/11 world. In Reign of Terror, Ackerman weaves together his groundbreaking reporting with a searing analysis of the consequences of waging borderless, global wars abroad and assaulting civil liberties at home."
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater and Dirty Wars

"America started the war on terrorism twenty years ago. It wound up at war with itself. Reign of Terror shows how the nation went down that road to hell. You've never read a book like it."
Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author of Legacy of Ashes

"Ackerman rivetingly shows how America's response to the 9/11 attacks turned presidents into kings, institutionalized cruelty, exacerbated racism, and made a continual state of terror the hallmark of our political culture. Reign of Terror is a profoundly valuable contribution to the historical record and, let us hope, the opening chapter of a long-overdue national reckoning."
Rick Perlstein, author of Reaganland and Nixonland

"Ackerman's Reign of Terror is breathtaking and essential. By connecting the threads of American exceptionalism, white supremacy and the War on Terror, Ackerman's book provides an invaluable lens to understanding the post-9/11 era, and the United States' violent embrace of torture, endless war and military occupations, presidential drone assassination hit-lists, and global mass surveillance"
Laura Poitras, Academy Award and Pulitzer-winning filmmaker and journalist