American reich : a murder in Orange County, neo-Nazis, and the new age of hate

Author

Eric Lichtblau

Call Number

• 320.56909 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2026.

Physical Description

vii, 340 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Summary

From the Pulitzer-winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Nazis Next Door, a deeply reported exploration of the violent resurgence of hatred and white supremacy through the lens of Orange County, California--"ground zero" for racial extremism--and the story of one brutal murder there that revealed the deep roots of violent bigotry as a bellwether for the country. One night in early 2018, while he was home from college, an Ivy League student named Blaze Bernstein snuck out of his parents' house in Orange County. Waiting for him in a car outside was an old high-school classmate: Sam Woodward, someone who Blaze mostly remembered as a brooding, bigoted loner. But that night, after months of flirtatious messaging, Sam had succeeded in coaxing Blaze--a gay, Jewish sophomore at UPenn--out for a rendezvous. No one would ever see him alive again. In American Reich, veteran investigative journalist Eric Lichtblau uses the story of Blaze's life and death to shine a light on the epidemic of hate in Southern California and, increasingly, the nation as a whole. Orange County has long been a bastion of the ultra-right: carved out of farmland as a haven for wealthy whites fleeing the diversifying metropolis to the north, it was the birthplace of the far-right John Birch Society, a hub for neo-Nazi recruitment, and a powerful springboard for race-baiting Republican politicians including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But in the years leading up to Blaze's disappearance, Orange County was changing: like the country as a whole, it was rapidly diversifying, to the outrage of many of its white residents. No one was more opposed to the changes than America's resurgent neo-Nazi groups, one of which had recently gained a new member: Sam Woodward. Revealing how Orange County has exported racial hatred to the rest of the country and the world, American Reich weaves this tragic tale together with stories from across the nation, showing what this haunted place and the colliding paths of two of its residents reveal about America's fractured soul and our hope for healing.

Contents

• Prologue: The ashes of Western civilization
• Part one: No one can know. I'm a Cancer
• The Skinhead capital of the world
• Saboteur
• The white race is back in the game
• They want to build a Fourth Reich
• Hate Camp
• Right-wing death squad
• Text is boring but murder isn't
• Part two: No turning back. The spigot is on full blast
• Who's Sam Woodward
• The sword has been drawn
• Impunity to violent bigots
• White replacement
• Go back to your own country
• Is this America?
• Pure evil
• Hate will never be tolerated
• Epilogue: Poisoning the blood.