The Making of a Homegrown Terrorist focuses on the increasing phenomenon of terrorists “whose familiarity with American culture makes them more difficult to detect prior to their acts of terror” (p. 1). The book is not limited to domestic Islamic terrorists, and includes substantial discussions of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber; Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber;” Bill Ayers and his weather underground; as well as Bernadine Dohrn and others such as John Walker Lindh and Nidal Malik Hasan.

The author draws on a lifetime of scholastic experience as well as the work of Vamik Volkan (The Need to Have Enemies and Allies, ), Margaret Singer (Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, ), and his own work, Malignant