Author(s): Stephan Talty

True Crime

No Other Event in the Last Fifty Years is Shrouded in Myth like the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Today, we remember this moment for the seventy-six people, including twenty children, who died in the fire; for its inspiration of the Oklahoma City bombing; and for the wave of antigov-ernment militarism that followed. What we understand far less is what motivated the Davidians' enigmatic leader, David Koresh. Drawing on first-time, exclusive interviews with Koresh's family and survivors of the siege, Talty, a master of narrative nonfiction, paints a psychological portrait of this infamous icon of the 1990s. We see how Koresh, born Vernon Howell into hypermasculine central Texas in the 1960s, weathered childhood abuse and isolation and found a new version of himself in religious fundamentalism, and how his fixation on holy war collided with his paranoid obsession with firearms and sexual conquests to destructive effect. Talty shows how the Davidians' deadly fifty-one-day standoff with the embattled FBI and ATF embodied an antigovernment ethic that continues to resonate today. Now, three decades after that unforgettable moment, this "dark chronicle of hubris and violence" (Kirkus Reviews) presents the man at the center of the tragedy-and the government mistrust he inspired-in his fullest context yet.