The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (Oxford University Press), by Beverly Gage

On Sept. 16, 1920, one of the world's first car bombs was detonated. The vehicle was a horse cart and the apparent target was the House of Morgan in New York's financial district. In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Yale historian Beverly Gage explores an episode notorious in its day but long ago swept under the rug of American amnesia. The bombing, killing 38 bystanders and wounding hundreds more, was part of a chain of terrorist acts ascribed to radical trade unionists, violent anarchists and Bolsheviks. Painstakingly researched and written with a novelist's eye for description and telling detail, Gage's account is a vivid reminder that 9/11 wasn't the first time in American history when terrorism forced the government and the public to weigh security against civil liberties.