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American Reich
A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Jan 6, 2026
- Page Count
- 352 pages
- Publisher
- Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN-13
- 9780316564717
Price
$30.00Price
$40.00 CADFormat
Format:
- Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD
- ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99
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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.
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"Backed by a master class in investigative reporting, American Reich provides a brilliant, revelatory look at the forces of white hate that have been revived and unleashed on the nation by Donald Trump. Alarm bells go off on every page as Eric Lichtblau warns us about a looming and existential threat to democracy, one that is building even in affluent, diverse places like Orange County, California, home to Disneyland. There is no more urgent crisis facing America than white hate—and no more urgent book than American Reich."James Risen, author of The Last Honest Man: The CIA, The FBI, The Mafia, and The Kennedys—and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy
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"A brilliant, disturbing look into how the U.S. learned to love to hate again—and the many warning signs we've failed to heed."Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times columnist, 2025 Pulitzer finalist, and co-author of A People's Guide to Orange County
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