Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza by Akbar Shahid Ahmed. W.W. Norton, 368 pages. 2026.

The final years of the Biden administration proceeded like a slow, unchecked slide toward disaster—marked by tens of thousands of deaths in Palestine, the systematic destruction of its hospitals and universities, and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. For many observers, myself included, the White House’s response felt bewilderingly self-destructive: Rather than leveraging American power or imposing a lasting arms embargo, the administration bent or broke US laws and squashed internal dissent to ensure Israel’s military campaign could proceed unchecked.

Longtime diplomatic reporter Akbar Shahid Ahmed captures this dark period in Crossing the Red Line , a deeply reported account of White House and State Department decision-making from Hamas’s October 7 attacks to when Biden slunk out of office amid the wreckage of the so-called rules-based international order.…