Vorab-Rezensenten

On Sept. 16, 1920, a horse-drawn wagon carrying 100 pounds of dynamite and a quarter-ton of cast-iron slugs exploded in front of the Morgan Bank and the New York Stock Exchange – in the very heart of New York’s Financial District. More than 400 people were killed or injured. It was the deadliest bombing in the nation’s 150-year history – and was the first terrorist attack on American soil. To this day, the reason for the bombing – and its perpetrators – remain a mystery. In The Death Instinct, Jed Rubenfeld offers the thrilling story of what happened on that day. Stratham Younger, a Harvard-trained physician, and Captain Jimmy Littlemore of the New York Police Department are literally thrown into the maelstrom when they witness the bombing and its horrible aftermath. Before long they come to understand that the bombing is only one part of a larger plan that, if successful, could plunge the world into another war. As Younger and Littlemore begin to piece together what led to the bombing, they grapple with challenges in their own lives. While serving as a military doctor in World War I, Younger met Colette Rousseau, who had been trained by the legendary Madame Curie to run a portable X-ray machine at the Western Front. Colette’s young brother has ceased to speak for reasons he won’t reveal, and Colette is convinced that the only man who can cure her brother of his self-imposed muteness is the greatest psychoanalyst in Europe, Sigmund Freud. Back in the United States, Littlemore’s investigation into the bombing leads him to Washington, D.C., in the weeks leading up to the election of President Warren G. Harding. He follows a series of seemingly unrelated clues that finally lead him to understand the truth behind the bombing, who arranged it, and what it was meant to accomplish. As E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime brought to life New York in the early 20th century, so, too, does Jed Rubenfeld’s The Death Instinct as it skillfully weaves together historical truth with a compelling fictional narrative to create a gripping historical mystery about a tragedy that holds eerie parallels to our own time.