The Inheritance

An American Tragedy in Five Acts

By: Janet Reitman

A stunning work of deeply reported narrative nonfiction that traces the lives of nine Americans over three turbulent decades, offering both a clear-eyed account of a nation in crisis and a long overdue moral reckoning—from award-winning New York Times Magazine writer Janet Reitman

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, the country is adrift, riven by fear, anxiety, and deep disillusionment. The constitution is eroding. Political extremism is the new normal. Broad swaths of the country are gripped by virulent anti-immigrant sentiment and nihilism has infected a generation of young men. In The Inheritance, Janet Reitman, the bestselling author of Inside Scientology, chronicles how we got here, weaving together complex personal narratives to form a deeply affecting portrait of a society at war with itself.

The Inheritance tells the story of nine individuals struggling to hold on to their belief in the promise of America. The Oneschuk family, living an idyllic life in the Boston suburbs, confronts its own complicity as their teenage son drifts toward extremism. Terry Albury, an FBI counterterrorism agent, sacrifices his career to expose the bureau’s secret racial profiling and surveillance of Muslim communities. Nathan Damigo, a traumatized and disillusioned Iraq veteran, turns his back on democracy and finds purpose in the cause of white nationalism. Marlo Cadeddu, an idealistic young national security lawyer, takes on a government bent on undermining the rule of law. Muslim Americans fight for justice in a country that surveils, prosecutes, and exiles them.

Blending rigorous reporting with the intimacy, immediacy, and propulsion of a novel, The Inheritance lays bare the hidden costs of the war on terror and exposes, with riveting urgency, how the psychic wounds inflicted on a nation over a generation continue to haunt us to this day.