[A] barnburner of a new book ... Ackerman contends that the American response to 9/11 made President Trump possible. The evidence for this blunt-force thesis is presented in Reign of Terror with an impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued ... [A] revelatory book.

The book argues powerfully that the open-ended War on Terror has been an exceptionalist fantasy, a bipartisan failure, and a profound risk to American democracy ... The result of nearly two decades of reporting on the wars from a skeptical position, Reign of Terror is attuned to their costs ... One aspect of the book that is both unusual and important is that Ackerman gives attention to the lives of people on the wrong end of U.S. violence, human beings who remain shockingly unfamiliar to most Americans ... In the genre of books that seek to explain why we are in the mess we are in, Reign of Terror is a formidable entry. To those who want to portray Trump as wholly exceptional, and discontinuous with the recent past, the book is an essential corrective ... Ackerman’s book lands at a pivotal moment.

Ackerman provides an in-depth examination of the national security policy of the United States in the 20 years since 9/11 ... Unapologetically partisan and polemical, Reign of Terror is Ackerman’s take-no-prisoners attack on policies of the 'Security State' ... Ackerman provides detailed documentation of his claim that the legacy of the War on Terror isn’t limited to disastrous foreign military deployments.

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. The results are terrifying ... 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?

Part-chronicle, part-polemic ... The author’s anger is understandable, to a point. Ackerman displays a masterful command of facts ... Ackerman is fluent in discussing the so-called security state, and how it is a creature of both political parties ... Ackerman delves meticulously into the blowback resulting from the war on terror. Unfortunately, he downplays how the grudges and enmities of the old country have been magnified by key social forces ... Ackerman can overplay his hand.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that this is clearly the work of an author who was himself extremely online for much of this period and has a gift for conveying the overcaffeinated, manic energy of online political discourse ... Reign of Terror is at its strongest when Ackerman recalls some of the outrages-of-the-week of the past 20 years, which may have faded from memory but feel portentous in retrospect ... The book compellingly argues that, the protestations of neoconservative Never Trumpers notwithstanding, Trump’s 'America First' doctrine was not a break from Bush’s 'freedom agenda'; it was its inevitable conclusion. Less convincing is the suggestion that, as the subtitle suggests, the war on terror 'produced Trump'.

Attempting the near impossible, national-security correspondent Ackerman offers a book stuffed to the brim with details discussing the events leading to 9/11 and how America’s response paved the way for the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency 15 years later, while still acknowledging his project’s incompleteness ... The book gives readers a deeper-than-headlines take on Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange ... This book does a masterful job communicating how nothing is as it seems. As for what to make of that assertion, the onus is on the reader.

... forg[es] a new, bright-orange link in a causal chain that connects 9/11 to today ... Ackerman’s arguments on all these points are compelling, even if his focus is sometimes too selective; in describing the rise of white nationalism, for example, he virtually ignores the more obvious and fundamental economic and social explanations for this trend — like the 2007-8 financial crisis and the election of the country’s first Black president. While his sense of causation may be off, however, his long, grim chronology serves as an important reminder of just how many terrible mistakes the United States has made in the War on Terror ... At a moment when anti-Trump Republicans are being praised by the mainstream media, it’s also useful to be reminded of the ways the last generation of Republican leaders set the precedents that Trump would exploit so wantonly ... That said, Reign of Terror is not well served by its chronological structure, which is long, dense and packed with extraneous detail...There’s so much extra story crammed into this story that the familiar parts sometimes overshadow the fresher ones ... Sticking almost entirely to narrative also means that Reign of Terror fails to address some crucial analytical points. Most important, it lacks a discussion of how the United States should have responded to Al Qaeda, the attacks of 9/11 and the threat of violent extremism. Moreover, while Ackerman occasionally hints at what he wants to happen now he gives readers no sense of how to get there, or how the United States could better protect itself from the dangers that do exist ... This failure to engage with hard policy questions points to another problem with the book: Ackerman seems to have little interest in persuasion. His tone throughout is snarky and scornful; he depicts most of the players in his drama as gutless, scheming or simply stupid ... Rage and derision are appropriate, or at least understandable, responses to Trump and his depredations. I’m not sure moderate Democrats or the mainstream media deserve the same treatment. While the tenor of the book may satisfy readers who already feel exactly the same way as Ackerman, it’s likely to alienate those who don’t ... All the contempt only distracts attention from the book’s many important points. And it turns “Reign of Terror” into a left-wing instantiation of both the meanness and the polarization that characterized the Trump era, rather than the refutation of that era that a less vituperative account might have offered. In the end, the book doesn’t just fail to provide a clear sense of how the War on Terror should have been run, or of how the Biden administration can finally conclude it — answers that, as the current carnage in Afghanistan shows, are more necessary than ever. The book also offers no way out of the vicious, self-perpetuating domestic conflict that our foreign wars helped ignite — a conflict that writing like this may only perpetuate.

Ackerman capably connects seemingly disparate elements without forcing issues ... An intelligent, persuasive book about events that are all too current.

[A] sweeping indictment of post-9/11 politics ... Ackerman’s critique of specific elements of the war on terror are incisive, if sometimes lurid ... Unfortunately, his promiscuous applications of the trope ('Coronavirus was the public health equivalent of the War on Terror') and blanket allegations of racism ('only white supremacy can truly explain the depth of right-wing fury at Obama') lack nuance. By explaining everything in terms of counterterrorism and white supremacism, Ackerman ends up obscuring more than he clarifies.