Waco Rising
David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias
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- 105,00 kr
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- 105,00 kr
Publisher Description
Named one of The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2023"
A news-making account of the war between David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and the FBI, and how their standoff launched today’s militias
In 1993, David Koresh and a band of heavily armed evangelical Christians took on the might of the US government. A two-month siege of their compound in Waco, Texas, ended in a firefight that killed seventy-six, including twenty-five children. America is still picking up the pieces, and we still haven’t heard the full story.
Kevin Cook, who revealed the truth behind a mythic, misunderstood murder in his 2014 Kitty Genovese, finally provides the full story of what happened at Waco. He gives readers a taste of Koresh’s deadly charisma and takes us behind the scenes at the Branch Davidians’ compound, where “the new Christ” turned his followers into servants and sired seventeen children by a dozen “wives.” In vivid accounts packed with human drama, Cook harnesses never-reported material to reconstruct the FBI’s fifty-one-day siege of the Waco compound in minute-to-minute detail. He sheds new light on the Clinton administration’s approval of a lethal governmental assault in a new, definitive account of the firefight that ended so many lives and triggered the rise of today’s militia movement. Waco drew the battle lines for American extremists—in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s words, “Waco started this war.” With help from sources as diverse as Branch Davidian survivors and the FBI’s lead negotiator during the siege, Cook draws a straight line from Waco’s ashes to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol and insurrections yet to come.
Unmissable reading for anyone interested in the truth of what happened in Texas three decades ago, Waco Rising is chillingly relevant today. Here is the spark that ignited today’s antigovernment militias.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Cook (The Burning Blue) offers a fast-paced if sketchy account of the deadly 51-day showdown between the U.S. government and members of the Branch Davidian religious sect in 1993. Drawing from extensive interviews with surviving group members, Cook is at his strongest when discussing the day-to-day life of the Davidians under their unstable, self-appointed prophet, David Koresh. But the book's account of the standoff, which began in a shoot-out when ATF agents attempted to seize weapons stockpiled at the Davidians' compound in Waco, Tex., lacks some critical perspective: Cook cites survivor testimony to suggest that Koresh was sincere about ending the standoff in the next few days, despite having already broken his promises to the FBI once, and had no intention of manufacturing "a repeat of the mass dying at Jonestown" (in the words of an FBI spokesman), despite evidence that he and his followers intentionally fueled and set the fire that killed 76 sect members. Cook also relies on FBI negotiator Gary Noesner, who was abruptly replaced during the standoff, to support the claim that the agents who took over "deceived" attorney general Janet Reno into authorizing the raid on the compound. Though Cook does reveal inconsistencies and misrepresentations in government accounts, this rehash sacrifices nuance for drama.
