The Day Wall Street Exploded The Day Wall Street Exploded

The Day Wall Street Exploded

A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror

    • 4.4 • 5 Ratings
    • $20.99
    • $20.99

Publisher Description

Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of the financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded, making the Wall Street explosion the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history until the Oklahoma City bombing.

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of that once infamous but now largely forgotten event. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also gives readers the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that helped to shape American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J.P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical "Big Bill" Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; "America's Sherlock Holmes," William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics.

Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.

Praise for the hardcover:

"Outstanding."
--New York Times Book Review

"Ms. Gage is a storyteller...she leaves it to her readers to draw their own connections as they digest her engaging narrative."
--The New York Times

"Brisk, suspenseful and richly documented"
--The Chicago Tribune

"An uncommonly intelligent, witty and vibrant account. She has performed a real service in presenting such a complicated case in such a fair and balanced way."
--San Francisco Chronicle

GENRE
History
RELEASED
2009
January 28
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
416
Pages
PUBLISHER
Oxford University Press
SELLER
The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford trading as Oxford University Press
SIZE
4.1
MB

More Books Like This

Savage Peace Savage Peace
2007
Lincoln's Lie Lincoln's Lie
2020
Big Trouble Big Trouble
2012
The Hour of Fate The Hour of Fate
2020
City of Scoundrels City of Scoundrels
2012
The Lincoln Assassination The Lincoln Assassination
2014

More Books by Beverly Gage

Customers Also Bought

The British Are Coming The British Are Coming
2019
Midnight in Chernobyl Midnight in Chernobyl
2019
American Prometheus American Prometheus
2005
The Splendid and the Vile The Splendid and the Vile
2020