From the new afterword by the author: Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a “loving” God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the superstitious bloodletting that has plagued bewildered people throughout history. . .

Since 9/11, one important question has persisted: What was really going on behind the scenes with intelligence services and government leaders during the time preceding that terrible day? After an eighteen-month investigation, Gerald Posner reveals much previously undisclosed information, including details about a secret deal between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden; how the U.S. government missed several chances to kill or capture bin Laden; how the CIA tracked-and then lost-two of the hijackers when they entered the United States months before the attacks; the devastating consequences of the crippling rivalry between the CIA and FBI; and the startling account of top al Qaeda captive whose information subsequently led to a trail of mysterious deaths of Saudi Arabian princes and Pakistani military leaders. "Why America Slept exposes the frequent mistakes made by law enforcement and government agencies, and demonstrates how the failures to prevent 9/11 were tragically not an exception but typical. In the end, Posner makes a damning case that the terrorist attacks could have been prevented.

"One of America's finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart. An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies-sometimes realities-of violence. Across the country, men "of God" glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war-a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened-love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood. Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all. Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility"--

One of the most elite educational institutions in the world, the Air Force Academy has, from its inception, attracted the best and the brightest, producing leaders not only in the military but throughout American society. In recent years, however, the Academy has also been producing a cadre of zealous evangelical Christians intent on creating a fundamentalist power base at the highest levels of our country. With God on Our Side is shocking exposé of life inside the United States Air Force Academy and the systematic program of indoctrination sanctioned, coordinated, and carried out by fundamentalist Christians within the U.S. military. It is also the story of Michael L. Weinstein, a proud Academy graduate and the father of two graduates and a current cadet, who single-handedly brought to light the evangelicals' utter disregard of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state that is so essential to the nation's military mission. Weinstein's war would pit him and his small band of fellow graduates, cadets, and concerned citizens against a program of Christian fundamentalist indoctrination that could transform our fighting men and women into "right-thinking" warriors more befitting a theocracy. In the process, he would come face to face with religious bigotry and at its most extreme and fight an unrelenting battle to save his beloved Academy, the ideals it stood for, and the very future of the country. An important book at a critical time in our nation's history, With God on Our Side is the story of one man's courageous struggle to thwart a creeping evangelism permeating America's military and to prevent a taxpayer-funded theocracy in which only the true believers have power.

Secret history of Islamist terrorism in America from Sirhan Sirhan to Major Hasan and how the JDO fights it. The JDO was founded in March 1982 in reaction to the demise of the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The JDO was never and never will be a Kahanist organization; instead it is based on principles first set forth by the Honorable Zev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky, poet, statesman and militarist told Jewish audiences prior to the Holocaust to leave Europe. In 2010 JDO was able to get a meeting of the American Renaissance Party that was to be held at the Skyline Motel in Washington, D.C. cancelled despite the insistence of its manager that it take place. In February 2011 JDO quashed another meeting of this racist group with the help of the NAACP and City Council members Patrick Cannon and Councilman Warren Turner. These men had enough self-respect to stop these KKK jackasses from spewing their racial-hatred in Charlotte, North Carolina. Look what happened in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1979 when the Klan mowed down a "Death to the Klan" march staged by Communists. Declassified FBI documents revealed that JDO Chairman Mordechai Levy warned the FBI that the Klan was planning a violent attack but his intelligence was ignored due to his status as a Jewish militant. Just the opposite should have been true. In March 2011 the JDO was able to convince the landlord of the the Nazi-Holocaust revisionist scumy group The Institute of Historical Review not to renew their lease. In May 2011 the JDO held a demonstration in front of Nazi Headquarters on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. These are our latest actions - we've been staging these events and others for years and years. It is from this militant / activist point of view that the JDO research team studied the history of Islamist terrorism on American soil within certain parameters of interest. Rather than using a shotgun approach we zeroed in on terrorist plots in which bombs were actually constructed or shots were fired and excluded numerous conspiracies that the FBI nipped in the bud. Our researchers obtained the documents from every terrorism court case in the United States, conducted interviews, scoured the Internet in all languages, studied declassified government documents, filed FOIA requests then put the puzzle pieces together. We even collected the trash in front of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations at 115 East 65th Street in Manhattan and discovered cable traffic that indicated the PLO was using Syrian diplomatic pouches to smuggle bomb parts to various locations throughout the world. JDO turned these cables over to Israeli intelligence who cautioned JDO not to reveal its methodology as it was going to be applied to other hostile diplomatic installations. JDO waited for a year before revealing its discovery on local television. Shortly thereafter a car with two Arabic looking men parked outside JDO headquarters at 6 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. A JDO member displayed his semi-auto Uzi and invited the thugs upstairs. It was just another day in the 1980's at JDO Headquarters.