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24 Hours at the Capitol
  • Published: 5 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9780807026168
  • Imprint: Beacon Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $45.00

24 Hours at the Capitol

An Oral History of the January 6th Insurrection

Formats & editions
EBook
30 Dec 2025
Paperback
5 Jan 2027
Hardback
27 Jan 2026
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The 24 Hours in Charlottesville author offers a minute-by-minute account of the January 6 riots through never-before-heard stories of those who were there

Neus goes beyond mainstream reporting to reveal important truths about the US white nationalist movement

This bracing account reconstructs what it was actually like in and around the Capitol during those 24 hours.

  • Lawmakers recount donning gas masks and being evacuated to safe rooms.
  • Police officers recall insurrectionists screaming at them and calling them traitors.
  • Staffers remember “walking over pools of blood” as they ran for their lives.
  • A young Asian-American staffer recalls locking herself in a room just feet from the rioters, mentally preparing to be raped.
  • A mostly Black janitorial staff began cleaning the blood of insurrectionists off the marble floor on the Capitol before the building was even officially secured.

Neus’s sources include original interviews, court documents, firsthand accounts, the US Capitol Historical Society’s oral history project on the insurrection, and the work of Tim Heaphy, chief investigator of the congressional January 6 Select Committee.

January 6 was largely planned right out in the open, but lawmakers and government officials underestimated the threat in part because it was coming from white people. Neus examines the underlying racial implications of not only the attack itself, but also in the planning and coordination of the response.
  • Published: 5 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9780807026168
  • Imprint: Beacon Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $45.00
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Praise for 24 Hours at the Capitol

"A shocking window into a day that history must never forget. It is filled with stunning details that are new to even those who covered it that day. Nora Neus masterfully weaves dozens of perspectives into one riveting account that makes what transpired even more seismic than we knew."—John Berman, CNN Anchor

"In 24 Hours at the Capitol, Nora Neus has brought to life a propulsive and compelling narrative while providing a vital historical record to combat the forces of misinformation seeking to obscure what really happened on January 6th."—Ian Rosenberg, media lawyer and author of The Fight for Free Speech: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms

Neus is becoming one of America’s foremost oral historians, and this book is a must-read for anyone struggling to understand political violence in this country.—Tim Heaphy, chief investigator for the US Congress January 6 Select Committee

Nora Neus has crafted a fascinating window into one of the most consequential days of modern American politics. Her deep research delivers a seat-of-your-pants, pulse-racing read, journeying minute by minute through a day that changed America forever.—Garrett Graff, author of The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb

Booklist *STARRED* review
Issue: November 1, 2025

"The riotous January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, when Congress was meeting to affirm the election of Joe Biden as president, was months in the making. Seeds of insurrection were planted by conspiracy-mongers, militias, and Donald Trump himself. Through interviews with journalists who covered the white supremacist movement and the insurrection, people who were working in the Capitol that day, police who fought off the violent mob, rioters and families of those caught up in the event, and transcripts from the House committee that investigated the insurrection, Neus (24 Hours In Charlottesville, 2023) has penned a compelling oral history of this dark time in the history of the U.S. Twitter, Parler, Telegram, and other communication channels among groups like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, along with their actions, including assembling a "Quick Reaction Force" of guns and ammunitions in Virginia, show that the deadly January 6 assault was not spontaneous or patriotic. Descriptions of air thick with bear spray, tear gas, and mace, officers being surrounded and beaten, and staffers sheltering as rioters pillaged Congressional offices effectively communicate the chaos. Current actions to whitewash the January 6 insurrection make this an especially important document."
— Laurie Unger Skinner