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In End of Days, Chris Jennings explains the significance of this historic siege by setting the story of the Weaver family within the long history of apocalyptic Christianity in the United States, illuminating the ways in which that faith has gradually transformed the nation. The strain of doomsday Christianity that gripped the Weavers, he shows, was grounded in a particular reading of biblical prophecy that can be traced back to the 1870s and up through the twentieth-century rise of Christian fundamentalism to the right-wing conspiracism that now defines American society and politics. The events at Ruby Ridge acted as an accelerant for this spreading worldview, and are essential to understanding the crisis that our nation confronts today.

Chris Jennings is the author of Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (2016). A former editorial staffer at The New Yorker, he grew up in New York City and graduated from Deep Springs College and Wesleyan University. Jennings lives in Northern California with his family.