Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism

Toobin (True Crimes and Misdemeanors) delivers an eye-opening study of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Drawing on the defense team’s internal records, interviews with McVeigh’s family members, and other primary sources, Toobin recounts how McVeigh became obsessed with guns when he was young; grew fixated on the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries, whose protagonist bombs an FBI building; and joined the Army in 1988, meeting his future coconspirator Terry Nichols on the first day of basic training. After serving in the First Gulf War, McVeigh was largely aimless upon his return stateside. Angered by the federal government’s handling of the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., and Bill Clinton’s signing of the 1994 assault weapons ban, McVeigh and Nichols believed the government had declared war on gun owners and planned to strike back, assembling the materials to make a bomb that killed more than 160 lives, including 15 children. Toobin also delves into McVeigh’s anti-tax convictions, veneration of the Declaration of Independence, and conspiracy thinking, building a persuasive case that the bombing was motivated by beliefs that have come to dominate right-wing politics. It’s a tragic and edifying account of the road to domestic terrorism. (May)