It is that time again. A day that will live in infamy not only in American history, but in my life personally as well, as I watched with horror and disbelief the deaths of David Koresh and his Bible Students at Mt Carmel perish in the flames. Many questions, and more misinformation than truth, has surrounded this incident since.
This 2023 interview with Mitch Jeserich @lettersandpolitics3605 at KPFA in Berkeley, CA captures things pretty well. One hour on getting the facts straight on what happened that day, as well as the 51 days before the fatal end–and the entire history of the Koresh “Branch Davidian” movement.
For much more see my Playlist on Youtube that includes my 1995 Congressional Testimony with Dr. Phillip Arnold, a three hour roundtable with me and three of the other leading scholars on the subject, and lots of other materials here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIRNAKj50kuskA1qjO3ob0fMvOm5DGkLK
Also, my book, co-authored with Eugene Gallagher, remains I think the “standard” academic analysis of what happened at Waco 1993–and why?
Why Waco: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America, co-authored with Eugene Gallagher (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), paperback edition published in April, 1997. (Kindle link).
Malcom Gladwell, in his featured piece in the New Yorker, “Sacred and Profane: How Not to Negotiate with Believers,” (March 31, 2014) credited Tabor and his colleague Philip Arnold, as singularly pursuing a course of action in the 1993 Waco/David Koresh tragedy that well might have resulted in a peaceful outcome.
Additional Media Coverage: cover review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review; Serialized in Harper’s Magazine, June, 1995; included on New York Times 1995 “Best List” (November 3, 1995 NYTBR) lengthy reviews have appeared in Lingua Franca, Choice, New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Kirbus, The New York Review of Books, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, First Things, Christianity Today and Religious Studies News (AAR/SBL); the book was also reviewed in approximately 38 newspaper chains worldwide.
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