William M. Arkin’s first work of fiction, History in One Act: A novel of 9/11, will be out in stores on June 8, 2021 & is available for pre-ordering on the Featherproof site right now. “But… why?” you might (reasonably) ask.
We expect this novel to be a little controversial due to its subject matter, but that potential controversy is very much related to why we’re interested in the book. Not because we dream of blockbuster sales, but because we dream of greater cultural understanding.
The attacks of 9/11 were unquestionably horrible—but Bill believes (as we do) that, collectively, Americans haven’t given much thought to really understanding why they happened in the first place. It requires a genuinely open mind & nuanced beliefs to move beyond saying that radical Islamists just “hate freedom” to examining some of their legitimate grievances with U.S. foreign policy (while simultaneously never becoming an apologist for terrorists).
We’ve no doubt that other writers have published a treatise on this very issue, but Bill has managed a real trick with History. He’s combined a difficult topic with the conventions of a conspiracy novel to give us a truly captivating and thoughtful page-turner. It’s a book that newly illuminates 9/11 (and the decades of war that followed) through clashing worldviews and very human stories.
Weighing in at 2.5 pounds and 720 pages, History in no small commitment to read, but we hope it can help us better understand what led to that dark day, and why it happened.