Timothy Heaphy was the lead investigator on the teams looking into the Charlottesville Unite the Right 'rally' as well as the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. In this important book, he isn't attempting to rehash what's already in the existing reports about these events, but explaining what lessons can be learned from them going forward. This is an effort to take a hard look at the issues that led to these events, the failures of law enforcement, political leaders and others, the role of social media in spreading disinformation, and how these failures can be addressed. He is clear-eyed about the difficulties of some things, given the free speech protections in the US Constitution.

While the focus of this book is the two particular events in the subtitle, the issues he describes are far more broad and will no doubt be useful in future. Moreover, some of the failures and lessons learned can be useful to people outside the US. They will have their own specific cultural and societal circumstances, but the social media problem in particular is a global problem. There are no easy solutions here, but Heaphy provides a concise and compelling argument about what has allowed events like these to occur, what issues need to be addressed, and why these things matter now more than ever.

Thank you, Steerforth, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Harbingers: What January 6 and Charlottesville Reveal About Rising Threats to American Democracy, by Timothy J. Heaphy.

This book will be released on December 31, 2024.

The author was the chief investigative counsel for the January 6 Committee, as well as leading the investigation into Charlottesville. The book tries to tie the two events together and focuses on their similarities.

The strongest part of the book was the chapter on the failures of law enforcement. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything else in the book that really set it apart. So, while it wasn’t a bad book, the best that I can give it is a B.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B equates to 3 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on November 3, 2024.