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Alston Chase presents an intepretation of the infamous Unabomber. He projects Ted Kaczynski's life against the sinister background of the Cold War, when the prospect of nuclear conflict generated a fear of technology and a culture of despair on American college campuses. On these same campuses, federal agencies enlisted psychologists in a covert search for technologies of mind control and encouraged ethically questionable experiments on unwitting students. Chase's account follows Kaczynski from an unhappy adolescence in Illinois to Harvard University, to postgraduate study and to the edge of the wilderness in Montana, where he put his unthinkable plans into action. His reign of terror is rendered in detail and interweaved with this narrative is the chilling counterpoint of Kaczynki's coded journal entries on the efficiacy of materials and techniques - the stark record of a killer's learning curve. A cautionary tale about modern evil, the conditions that provoked Kaczynski's alienation remain in place and may be getting worse as the War on Terrorism replaces the Cold War.
- Sales Rank: #231318 in Books
- Published on: 2003-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.41" h x 6.30" w x 9.50" l, 1.10 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Chase adds an important element to our understanding of the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Part of what made Kaczynski an iconic figure after his arrest in 1996 for 16 mail bombings (resulting in three deaths) between 1978 and 1995 was his unusual background as a highly gifted, Harvard-educated mathematician. While the media found comfort in writing him off as a mental case, more remarkable was how seemingly typical Kaczynski was. Bucking the conventional wisdom, Chase (In a Dark Wood) identifies Kaczynski as a victim more of the anxious and contradictory Cold War 1950s than of the incendiary 1960s. With a background strikingly similar to Kaczynski's-including both a Harvard degree and self-imposed exile in Montana-Chase is in a unique position to probe the underlying tensions that led Kaczynski to commit dispassionate murder in the name of ideals. Chase persuasively isolates the turning point in his subject's years at Harvard, "where lasting human relations are more rare than championship football teams." In Cambridge he faced the typical Harvard pressures but, more importantly, was a subject of three years' worth of what many will agree were wildly irresponsible psychological experiments led by maverick psychology pioneer Henry A. Murray. While the conclusions Chase draws are unimpeachable, his description of the fateful experiments feels truncated, no doubt because some records remain sealed. Chase's disenchanted indictment of academia (represented here by Harvard) as lackey to the military-industrial complex is all the more compelling for the author's unruffled sense of perspective. With its unusual emphasis and sometimes surprisingly personal tone, this may become the definitive Kaczynski volume. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Chase, who, like Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, graduated from Harvard and fled academe for the Montana wilderness, here offers a new slant on the triple murderer and doctor of philosophy. According to the author, the philosophical roots of Kaczynski's anti-industrialism began with Harvard's curriculum in the late 1950s. Chase writes that it cultivated the view, later to be called cultural or moral relativism, that democratic society and its institutions were sheer power relations and bereft of intrinsic value. Chase then sets forth the etymology, so to speak, of the killer's more particular thoughts, concluding that Kaczynski was a cherry picker among quite old and common execrations of technology. Tying in the killer's personal rages, Chase suggests that social awkwardness and participation in a traumatizing psychological experiment (led by the unorthodox psychologist Henry A. Murray) underlay Kaczynski's exaltation in planning and "justifying" his crimes. It takes an intellectual to think like that, and Chase astutely and provocatively delineates Kaczynski's metamorphosis into a Raskolnikov. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Alston Chase lives in Livingston, Montana.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Harvard and Alston Chase
By H. Avalos
No doubt about it: Alston Chase can write well enough
to keep my attention, but he cannot argue a point well
enough to convince me. Despite his philosophical training,
Chase cannot distinguish himself from his object:
The Unabomber.
According to Chase, a Harvard education helps explain
the disaffection and alienation that led Ted Kaczynski
to his homicidal endeavors. In particular, Chase blames
Kaczynski's participation inn the murky experiments of Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray.
But there are large gaps in Chase's theory. First, Chase
does cannot seem to find a single statement where Kaczynski expresses any hostility toward Harvard. This is significant insofar as Chase otherwise does allude to the Unabomber's journal entries.
One indication of motivation that Chase does provide (p. 342) is in the following quote from Kaczynski: "My ambition is to kill a scientist, big businessman, government official, or the like. I would also like to kill a communist."
Nothing here about killing Henry Murray. And nothing here about hating Harvard.
We know that Kaczynski targeted Berkeley, where he had worked. He sent a bomb to the University of Michigan, where he received his Ph.D. He even sent a bomb to Yale. But no, not even one to Harvard. It looks as if the Unabomber went out of his way to avoid harming Harvard.
Indeed, most of the time, we hear about Chase's discontent with his Harvard education. In a review in the Washington Post (March 2, 2003), Todd Gitlin notes how much Chase has injected his own Harvard experience into Kaczynski's life. Despite Chase's protestations to this review, Gitlin documents the fact that Chase wrongly assumed that his 1953 syllabus for a class had the same readings as the one Kaczyski followed later.
About fifteen year ago I read an essay by Alston Chase in BYU Today (August 1985). That piece is a succinct version of his book on the Unabomber, but without the Unabomber. One finds in that article lamentations about the moral relativism and alienating nature of modern civilization. And we find Chase's prescription for our malaise: Appeal to the "rightful province of faith" and a more serious consideration of teleology.
Of course, Chase ignores the fact that faith and teleology are largely responsible for the moral chaos of modern civilization. In any event, Chase apparently has now found the embodiment of alienation in Ted Kaczynski.
Yet, all is not lost for Chase's book, which manages to provide interesting musings on some intellectual trends of the post-War era.
But to the extent that he tries to be more specific about the Harvard connections, Chase fails. The book is more about Chase than about Kacyzynski's problems with Harvard. Accordingly, the book should best be titled: "Harvard and Alston Chase."
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Harvard and Alston Chase
By H. Avalos
No doubt about it: Alston Chase can write well enough
to keep my attention, but he cannot argue a point
well enough to convince me. Despite his training
as a philosopher, Chase just cannot seem to distinguish
himself from his object, the Unabomber.
Indeed, there at least two gaping holes in Chase's thesis that
Ted Kaczynski's experience at Harvard was partly responsible
for the homicidal genius known as the Unabomber. In particular,
Chase places some responsibility on the murky experiments conducted by Harvard psychology professor Henry A. Murray. Kaczynski was apparently one of Murray's subjects.
The first gaping hole is that there is not a single statement from Kaczynski
that shows any animosity or ill effects from Murray's experiments or from the Harvard experience. This is expected given Chase's frequent citation of some of the Unabomber's journal entries.
And when Chase does include a quote to enlighten us on the Unabomber's motivations, he selects one where Kaczynski says (p. 342): "My ambition is to kill a scientist, big businessman, government official or the like." Nothing here about Murray; and more significantly,nothing here about hating Harvard.
The second, and more glaring, lacuna in Chase's thesis is that the Unabomber never targeted Harvard as far as we know. We know that Kaczynski targeted Berkeley, where he had worked. He sent a bomb to the University of Michigan, where he received his Ph.D. He even sent a bomb to Yale. But no, not even one to Harvard. It looks as if the Unabomber went out of his way to avoid harming Harvard.
Chase's injection of his own philosophical and anti-Harvard sentiments have already been addressed in the review by Todd Gitlin in The Washington Post (March 2, 2003). Despite Chase's protestations to this review, Gitlin documents the fact that Chase wrongly assumed that his 1953 syllabus for a class had the same readings as the one Kaczynski followed later.
Some fifteen years ago I read an essay by Chase in BYU Today (August 1985). Therein he seemingly provides a shorter version of the book on the Unabomber. One finds in that article lamentations about the moral relativism and alienating nature of modern civilization. It concludes with a plea to allow faith and teleology to have a larger role in our world-view lest we descend into moral chaos.
Of course, Chase ignores the fact that faith and teleology are largely responsible for the moral chaos of modern civilization. In any event, Chase apparently has now found the embodiment of alienation in Ted Kaczynski.
But all is not lost for Chase's book, which manages to provide interesting musings on some intellectual trends of the post-War era. But to the extent that he tries to be more specific about the Harvard connections, Chase fails. The book is more about Chase than about Kaczynski's problems with Harvard. Accordingly, the book should best be titled: "Harvard and Alston Chase."
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