Message Bomber
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The Alphabet Bomber
Author: Jeffrey D. Simon
language: en
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Release Date: 2019-03-01
On August 6, 1974, a bomb exploded at Los Angeles International Airport, killing three people and injuring thirty-five others. It was the first time an airport had been bombed anywhere in the world. A few days later, police recovered a cassette tape containing a chilling message: “This first bomb was marked with the letter A, which stands for Airport,” said a voice. “The second bomb will be associated with the letter L, the third with the letter I, etc., until our name has been written on the face of this nation in blood.” In The Alphabet Bomber: A Lone Wolf Terrorist Ahead of His Time, internationally renowned terrorism expert Jeffrey D. Simon tells the gripping tale of Muharem Kurbegovic, a bright but emotionally disturbed Yugoslav immigrant who single-handedly brought Los Angeles to a standstill during the summer of 1974. He had conjured up the fictitious group “Aliens of America,” but it was soon discovered that he acted alone in a one-man war against government and society. The story of the Alphabet Bomber is about an extraordinary manhunt to find an elusive killer, a dogged prosecutor determined to bring him to justice, a pioneering female judge, and a devious mastermind whose heinous crimes foreshadowed the ominous threats we face today from lone wolf terrorists.
Serial Killers
In this provocative cultural study, the serial killer emerges as a central figure in what Mark Seltzer calls 'America's wound culture'. From the traumas displayed by talk show guests and political candidates, to the violent entertainment of Crash or The Alienist, to the latest terrible report of mass murder, we are surrounded by the accident from which we cannot avert our eyes. Bringing depth and shadow to our collective portrait of what a serial killer must be, Mark Seltzer draws upon popular sources, scholarly analyses, and the language of psychoanalysis to explore the genesis of this uniquely modern phenomenon. Revealed is a fascination with machines and technological reproduction, with the singular and the mass, with definitions of self, other, and intimacy. What emerges is a disturbing picture of how contemporary culture is haunted by technology and the instability of identity.
The Last Mission
A gripping account of the final American bombing mission of World War II and how it prevented a military coup that would have kept Japan in the war. How close did the Japanese come to not surrendering to Allied forces on August 15, 1945? The Last Mission explores this question through two previously neglected strands of late—World War II history, whose very interconnections could have caused a harrowing shift in the course of the postwar world. On the final night of the war, as Emperor Hirohito recorded a message of surrender for the Japanese people, a band of Japanese rebels, commanded by War Minister Anami's elite staff, burst into the palace. They had plotted a massive coup that aimed to destroy the recordings of the Imperial Rescript of surrender and issue false orders forged with the Emperor’s seal commanding the widely dispersed Japanese military to continue the war. If this rebellion had succeeded, the military would have proceeded with large-scale kamikaze attacks on Allied forces, costing huge casualties and just possibly provoking the Americans to drop a third atomic bomb on Japan over Tokyo–and continue to drop more bombs as Japanese resistance stiffened. Meanwhile, in the midst of an “end-of-war” celebration on Guam, Air Force radio operator Jim Smith and his fellow crewmen received urgent orders for a bombing mission over Japan’s sole remaining oil refinery north of Tokyo. As a stream of American B-29B bombers approached Tokyo, Japanese air defenses, fearing the approaching planes signaled the threat of a third atomic bomb, ordered a total blackout in Tokyo and the Imperial Palace, completely disrupting the rebels’ plans. Smith and his fellow crewmembers completed the mission, and a few hours later, the Emperor announced the surrender over Japan’s airwaves, dictating the end of the war. The Last Mission is an insightful piece of speculative investigation that combines narrative storytelling with historical contingency and explores how two seemingly unrelated events could have profoundly changed the course of modern history.