The Technologists

The first class atM.I.T. The last hope for a city in peril.

The acclaimed author of The Dante Club reinvigorates the historicalthriller. Matthew Pearl's spellbinding new novel transports readers totumultuous nineteenth-century Boston, where the word "technology" represents abold and frightening new concept. The fight for the future will hinge on . . .

THE TECHNOLOGISTS

Boston, 1868. The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one betweenthe past and the present, tradition and technology. On a former marshywasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, itsmission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors ofopportunity to everyone of merit. But in Boston Harbor a fiery cataclysm throwscommerce into chaos, as ships' instruments spin inexplicably out of control.Soon after, another mysterious catastrophe devastates the heart of the city. Isit sabotage by scientific means or Nature revolting against man's attempt tocontrol it?

The shocking disasters cast a pall over M.I.T. and provoke assaults from all sides-rivalHarvard, labor unions, and a sensationalistic press. With their firstgraduation and the very survival of their groundbreaking college now in doubt,a band of the Institute's best and brightest students secretly come together tosave innocent lives and track down the truth, armed with ingenuity and theirunique scientific training.

Led by "charity scholar" Marcus Mansfield, a quiet Civil War veteran andone-time machinist struggling to find his footing in rarefied Boston society,the group is rounded out by irrepressible Robert Richards, the bluest of BeaconHill bluebloods; Edwin Hoyt, class genius; and brilliant freshman EllenSwallow, the Institute's lone, ostracized female student. Working against theirsmall secret society, from within and without, are the arrayed forces of astratified culture determined to resist change at all costs and a darkmastermind bent on the utter destruction of the city.

Studded with suspense and soaked in the rich historical atmosphere for whichits author is renowned, The Technologists is a dazzling journey into adangerous world not so very far from our own, as the America we know todaybegins to shimmer into being.

Matthew Pearl is the New York Timesbestselling author of The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, and The LastDickens. He is the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante'sInferno (translated by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow) and Edgar AllanPoe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales.