In 1987 I published my first book, Talked to Death, about the life and murder of Denver talk show host, Alan Berg. The Oliver Stone movie, "Talk Radio," is based in part on this book. That story described how nine, obviously-fanatical neo-Nazis plotted to kill Berg and launch a white power revolution, designed to rid America of minorities. For the past decade, I've wanted to revisit this subject because highly disturbing pieces of the mindset -- the anger, fear, blame, hatred, and absolutist thinking -- of those who assassinated Berg have gradually crept from the fringes of our society into the American mainstream. They've become normalized inside major religions, the corporate media, and political leaders at the highest levels of our society. They are at the root of what all but shut down our federal government on the night of April 8, 2011, when the anti-abortionists were willing to sacrifice the jobs of 800,000 employees because they don't accept what has been settled law in the United States since 1973. Their religious ideology trumps the rule of law -- the very definition of extremism.

               On May 31, 2009, when abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down by Scott Roeder inside his Kansas church, I began researching my 20th book. The Wichita Divide: The Murder of Dr. George Tiller and the Battle Over Abortion, will be published this coming week. It's about the new American civil war that's infected our country for roughly the past four decades. It's about how deeply personal issues, especially sexual issues like reproduction, have been used to demonize entire segments of the population, and how this has been driven by some of the most successful people in our culture.

               The book's narrative focuses on the lives of two families, Dr. Tiller's and Scott Roeder's, and describes how both were trapped inside this war and experienced their own  tragedies. I've tried to show the heart and the cost of this conflict, mostly through the eyes of Roeder's ex-wife, Lindsey, who found out first-hand what it's like to marry a relatively "normal" man and watch him turn into an American terrorist.

               When people at the very top of society sanction hatred in a public way, it filters down to those not only less fortunate, but sometimes to those who are emotionally unstable. Then violence becomes not just likely, but virtually predictable. And then, when it's too late, the haters claim they had nothing to do with the bloodshed and run for the hills. Whether we want to be or not, we're all involved in this war and we're all responsible for what we bring to it. This is a fight for the soul of the nation, just as the first Civil War was. We can't afford to lose the sense of co-operation and balance that have kept America alive, and kept religion and politics separate, throughout more than two centuries. We are perilously close to the edge.