Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias

Named one of The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2023" A news-making account of the war between David Koreshs Branch Davidians and the FBI, and how their standoff launched todays 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 havent 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 Koreshs 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 FBIs fifty-one-day siege of the Waco compound in minute-to-minute detail. He sheds new light on the Clinton administrations approval of a lethal governmental assault in a new, definitive account of the firefight that ended so many lives and triggered the rise of todays militia movement. Waco drew the battle lines for American extremistsin Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeighs words, Waco started this war. With help from sources as diverse as Branch Davidian survivors and the FBIs lead negotiator during the siege, Cook draws a straight line from Wacos 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 todays antigovernment militias.