The Mad bomber of New York : the extraordinary true story of the manhunt that paralyzed a city

 by Michael M. Greenburg. Between 1940 and 1957, a lone man detonated at least 33 bombs across New York City, with increasingly sophisticated mechanisms. As usual, the spree of this mad bomber brought out a parade of false claimants, false leads, and frustrating dead ends for investigators. Eventually, the police turned to Dr. James Brussel, a psychiatrist and criminologist who practiced an early form of profiling. Aided by Brussel's work, the investigation led to George Metesky, a middle-aged resident of Waterbury, Connecticut. Metesky fit the profile to a T: a loner nursing an increasingly bitter hatred of powerful institutions that he blamed for a disabling injury sustained in 1931. Greenburg, a practicing attorney, has written an exciting and tense true-crime story that operates on two tracks. He examines, with surprising sympathy, Metesky's slow evolution from a social misfit to a hate-filled violent man with paranoid delusions. Greenburg seamlessly shifts to the criminal investigators as they strive to stop the reign of terror. This is a superbly written account and a useful reminder that, historically, many terrorists have been apolitical men following their own inner demons. --Booklist (Check Catalog)