The New York Review of Books (August 17, 2023) – American Carnage – Jeffrey Toobin’s book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing; The Sadistic Brats of ‘Succession’; Rats in Paris!; Colin Grant’s Unsparing Family Portrait; Resurrecting the Porter Sisters; The True Fables of Agota Kristof, and more…

American Carnage

Jeffrey Toobin’s book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing traces the path from Ronald Reagan’s antigovernment ideology to today’s radicalized right.

By Sean Wilentz

Ronald Reagan’s pronouncement, in his first inaugural address in 1981, that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” marked a signal moment in what has become the most successful political counterrevolution in modern American history.