An exploration of the violent resurgence of hatred and white supremacy through the lens of Orange County, California and the story of one brutal murder there that revealed the deep roots of violent bigotry as a bellwether for the country.
Ambitious, deeply reported ... The portrait of Woodward verges on cliché, which speaks more to the simple-mindedness of neo-Nazis than to any fault of Lichtblau’s writing ... An admirably vivid job ... Queasily of the moment, and evokes our present reality with frightening detail. One can only hope that someday its subject is relegated to the past.
Oscillating between alarming and infuriating ... It’s all here in clean, unflinching prose ... The book explodes with pulse-pounding tension as the police zero in on Woodward and unearth his crime. ... Lichtblau’s reporting is rock solid, but he could have used more real numbers rather than percentages to demonstrate the rise and spread of neo-Nazism, both within and beyond Orange County’s borders.
In American Reich, Lichtblau explores the resurgence of white supremacist hate acts by focusing on extremism in Orange County, California ... Advance press for American Reich describes it as revealing growing racial hatred and intolerance in the US while presenting 'hope for healing.' I was disturbed to read about horrific crimes receiving almost no national coverage over the past several years and saw little evidence of hope for healing in American Reich. The book closes with a quote from extremist Nick Fuentes, the young white nationalist who has been critical of Trump for a lack of extremism ... Apart from inaccurate PR and despite the gloomy picture Lichtblau paints, American Reich is an important, well-researched, and well-written read for anyone who imagines the current climate in the United States might not be so bad. The reader does not need to belong to any of the groups targeted for hatred to be concerned.
