America is starkly divided between the haves and the have-nots. A Republican president seeks reelection in the afterglow of a war many view as unnecessary and imperialisttic. He is bankrolled by millionaires, with every step of his career orchestrated by a political mastermind. Religious extremists crusade against the nation’s moral collapse. Terrorists plot the assassination of leaders around the world. And a lonely, disturbed revolutionary stalks the President. . . .It all happened. One hundred years ago. It all comes to life inThe Temple of Music.A vivid, gripping historical novel of the Gilded Age,The Temple of Music re-creates the larger-than-life characters and tempestuous events that rocked turn-of-the-century America. From battlefields to political backrooms, from romance to murder,The Temple of Music tells the tales of robber barons, immigrants, yellow journalists, and anarchists, all centering on one of the most fascinating, mysterious, but little-explored events in American history: the assassination of President William McKinley by the disturbed anarchist Leon Czolgosz.The Temple of Music brings to life the intrigues and passions, the hatreds and loves of a rich cast of real-life characters, including Emma Goldman, the passionate anarchist who forsakes her personal life to fight for workers’ rights and free love; her imprisoned lover, the failed assassin Alexander Berkman; corrupt kingmaker“Dollar” Mark Hanna, whose fund-raising and strategizing foreshadowed how modern presidential campaigns would be run; William Jennings Bryan, the populist orator and chief political rival of McKinley; flamboyant newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst; self-appointed morality czar Anthony Comstock; steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie; and Carnegie’s iron-fisted manager, Henry Clay Frick. At the center of this tableau is William McKinley, the president, and Leon... Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All ri