The Day Wall Street Exploded

A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror

By: Beverly Gage

Narrated by: Pam Ward

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of a once infamous but now largely forgotten terrorist attack. 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 takes listeners back into the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that shaped 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.

©2009 Beverly Gage (P)2018 Tantor

Great unknown story

This book relates shocking events and stories I hadn’t been aware of despite having read several books on the red scare of the 1940s from authors across the ideological spectrum. Gage does a terrific job of relating these events which come about from many intersecting characters and contexts, both without overwhelming detail or glossing over anything.

The first part was interesting, tailed off at the end

At first, I thought this was an amazing book. A story and background well told. About halfway through everything began to drag on. The story line became confusing and it seems more detail was added on detail without a coherent plan.