For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. A politically divided country turned the War on Terror into a cultural and then tribal struggle, ultimately expanding to conquer the Republican Party, often with the timid acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Reign of Terror will show how these policies created a foundation for American authoritarianism. It will show that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war metastasized into a broader and bitter culture struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. A union of journalism and intellectual history, Reign of Terror will be a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life.