The Temple of Music

This well-done combination with real life characters at an historic place and time is sometimes choppy as we flipflop from the stalker and the stalkee. It is a novel based on real people during the World's Fair in 1901 at Buffalo, New York. The Temple of Music is the beautiful centerpiece of the Exposition where Pres. William McKinley is set to give a speech. The times are good for the rich but not so good for the poor immigrants and low wage workers. At 5 p.m. on September 6, two bullets were fired close up and could be heard out on the Midway. Peopled with such illuminaries of that Gilded Age as the yellow tabloid publisher Hearst and Andrew Carnegie's iron-fisted manager Henry Clay Frick, it shows the dangers and adverse publicity our early presidents were subjected to in life and death. McKinley lasted a week before he died, on September 13, 1901, in late afternoon. In a month, the assassin Leon Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair, his brain extracted and examined after his death, and he was thrown into a pit and doused with acid. This is fiction. Surely we were more humane and life went on with others being charged as accessories but nothing could be proved.

The sights and sounds of the Gilded Age are vividly brought to life in this novel. It is so eloquent that you can just picture every scene. The contrast between the rich (which was almost sinfully gaudy) and the poor (so dark and gloomy and hopeless) come to life. It brings all the characters through the years to their meeting point at the Buffalo World"s Fair where anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley. This book is absolutely riveting and probably different from anything you've read lately. It's really worth your time.

The last two decades of the 19th century are two of the most colorful and momentous decades of our history, a fascinating era, but one often overlooked by good writers of historical fiction. Lowy's book is a welcome and long overdue addition to the genre. For anyone familiar with this chapter of American history there is no suspense; the plot moves steadily toward its inevitable conclusion: the assassination of McKinley by an anarchist. But along the way, the author's attention to detail brings to life the sights, smells, and sounds of an era that seems so distant, yet-in some notable respects-uncomfortably close to our own. It's a book of contrasts, starkly drawn. Lowy brings into sharp relief the fabulous, almost obscene, wealth of the robber barons and juxtaposes it against the grinding poverty and hardships that accompanied America's industrial revolution. That alone makes for a good read, but it's the vivid, and oddly sympathetic treatment that he gives his characters that make it compelling. Working with classic ingredients like `Dollar' Mark Hanna, William Randolph Hearst, Ambrose Bierce, and Emma Goldman, Lowy has worked up a hearty, historical broth that should please the reader. My compliments to the chef.