Description: "A riveting and thoroughly researched chronicle...reminiscent of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood." --The New York Times Book Review
The gripping story of the Ruby Ridge siege, showing how the historic standoff between federal agents and a white-separatist family set the stage for the conspiracy-laced politics of the Trump era. "Vivid, frightening, and fascinating...This book blew me away and opened my eyes."--Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker and Elon Musk On August 21, 1992, shots rang out while federal agents were surveilling a cabin in Boundary County, Idaho as part of an operation to arrest Randy Weaver--a reclusive, mountain-dwelling survivalist--for failure to appear in court on a gun charge. When Weaver finally surrendered to the authorities eleven days later, his wife, son, and dog lay dead, as did a US Marshal. Ever since, America has been trying to make sense of what happened on Ruby Ridge. Today, the question could not be more urgent, as the shock waves from Ruby Ridge have amplified and compounded, cracking the very foundations of our democracy. In End of Days, Chris Jennings explains the significance of this historic siege by setting the story of the Weaver family within the long history of apocalyptic Christianity in the United States, illuminating the ways in which that faith has gradually transformed the nation. The strain of doomsday Christianity that gripped the Weavers, he shows, was grounded in a particular reading of biblical prophecy that can be traced back to the 1870s and up through the twentieth-century rise of Christian fundamentalism to the right-wing conspiracism that now defines American society and politics. The events at Ruby Ridge acted as an accelerant for this spreading worldview, and are essential to understanding the crisis that our nation confronts today.Review Quotes: "What happened at Ruby Ridge more than three decades ago was a travesty. But Chris Jennings maps the historical roots of this cascade of stupidities with a clear-minded intelligence and stupendous reporting. America is awash in yet another era of apocalyptic, messianic, and conspiratorial passions--which makes End of Days a most compelling read."--Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of American Prometheus and Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography