02630cam a2200349 i 4500 2634636999 TxAuBib 20260203120000.0 251104s2026||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9780316564717 hardcover 30.00 0316564710 hardcover 30.00 TxAuBib rda Lichtblau, Eric. American reich [BOOK] : a murder in Orange County, neo-nazis, and a new age of hate / Eric Lichtblau. First edition. New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2026. vii, 340 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier sti rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier No one can ever know --No turning back. "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.". 20260203. LGBTQ+ people Crimes against United States. Jews Crimes against United States. Hate crime investigation. National socialism United States. Orange County (Calif.)