The Inheritance.jpg
The Inheritance.jpg

The Inheritance by Janet Reitman

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Hardcover:

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 Times

Journalist Janet Reitman follows nine Americans across three decades, from the end of the Reagan era to the present, to show how the years after 9/11 reshaped the country. Their paths include a Navy pilot and his teenage son's slide into extremism, a Marine who returns broken from Iraq, an FBI agent, and an attorney defending a Palestinian engineer accused of funding Hamas.

The Inheritance returns to these lives repeatedly as the decades pass, moving from the suburbs of Boston to immigrant communities in Dallas, from the deserts of Iraq to the encrypted chatrooms where extremism spreads.

Reitman, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of Inside Scientology, reports each story closely and tells it with a novelist's eye for detail.

The emphasis is on the human cost of the war on terror, the psychic wounds it left behind, and the disillusionment that followed, told through individuals rather than policy debates.

It suits readers of narrative nonfiction who want to understand how fear and extremism took hold in American life after September 11.

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 Times

Journalist Janet Reitman follows nine Americans across three decades, from the end of the Reagan era to the present, to show how the years after 9/11 reshaped the country. Their paths include a Navy pilot and his teenage son's slide into extremism, a Marine who returns broken from Iraq, an FBI agent, and an attorney defending a Palestinian engineer accused of funding Hamas.

The Inheritance returns to these lives repeatedly as the decades pass, moving from the suburbs of Boston to immigrant communities in Dallas, from the deserts of Iraq to the encrypted chatrooms where extremism spreads.

Reitman, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of Inside Scientology, reports each story closely and tells it with a novelist's eye for detail.

The emphasis is on the human cost of the war on terror, the psychic wounds it left behind, and the disillusionment that followed, told through individuals rather than policy debates.

It suits readers of narrative nonfiction who want to understand how fear and extremism took hold in American life after September 11.

  • Publisher: Random House

    Title: The Inheritance: An American Tragedy in Five Acts

    Author: Janet Reitman

    On Sale Date: October 6, 2026

    ISBN 13: 978-1-9848-5472-8

    ISBN 10: 1984854720

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $32.00

    Page Count: 448

    Dimensions: 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches

  • Janet Reitman is an award-winning journalist and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. She was formerly a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has twice been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, and was a fellow at the New America Foundation. Her previous book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion, was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book.

  • Critics and fellow authors are calling it incisive, haunting, and powerful:

    • The New York Times likened the book to a particle collider for the forces of the age.

    • Scott Anderson described it as an extraordinarily incisive and bracing study of the American dream.

    • George Packer called it a brilliantly composed, intimate, and haunting dirge.

    • Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, called it a powerful portrait of homegrown terrorism.

This book is for you if

  • You want to understand how the aftermath of 9/11 shaped American life over the following twenty-five years.

  • You're interested in how and why people are drawn toward extremism, from jihadi-focused counterterrorism to white nationalism.

  • You enjoy narrative nonfiction that follows several real lives and reads with novelistic detail.

  • You appreciate long-form reporting from a New York Times Magazine writer and the author of Inside Scientology.

  • You're looking for a book that connects the war on terror abroad to its human cost at home.

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