The Inheritance: An American Tragedy in Five Acts

by Janet Reitman

432 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 6, 2026

About the author

Janet Reitman is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and the author of "Inside Scientology," (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, July 2011), which was based on her National Magazine Award-nominated story of the same name published in Rolling Stone in March, 2006. She is the first American journalist to publish a major book on Scientology, and the only writer to have charted its full history.

Reitman also covered the war in Iraq for Rolling Stone and has reported on a wide range of other topics, including the failure of US and international recovery efforts in post-earthquake Haiti; the Duke lacrosse scandal; the death of American aid worker Marla Ruzicka in Baghdad; and the national childhood obesity crisis. She has also reported extensively in Africa, profiling Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, and covering conflicts in Sudan and Sierra Leone.

In addition to Rolling Stone, Reitman's work has appeared in GQ, Men's Journal, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and Salon, among other publications. She and journalist L. Christopher Smith live in Brooklyn, New York, with their French sheepdog, Bode.