Almost a quarter of a century on, is the US still being shaped by 9/11? Richard Beck thinks so, despite all the other shocking and pivotal events there since the 2001 attacks, from the financial crisis to the twin election victories of Donald Trump. In this long, ambitious book, which aims to be an “alternative national history”, encompassing politics, popular culture, consumerism, policing, the use of public spaces and even trends in parenting, Beck argues that 9/11 turned the US into a more aggressive, angry and anxious place, with Trump’s ascendancy only one of the consequences.
Beck depicts the “war on terror” that his country launched in response to al-Qaida’s surprise assault as a continuing, almost limitless military operation, which in its first two decades alone caused “900,000 deaths”, including those of “nearly 400,000 civilians”. His account of interventions and atrocities in countries such as Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan is clear and powerful, switching smoothly between strategic objectives and individual victims, yet much of it will be familiar to anyone who even casually follows US foreign policy.
