Picture a highly industrialized, prosperous nation. A nation under severe economic and political stress. A nation polarized along racial and sectional lines. A nation ripe for revolution. How would you manage a takeover? Mass armies on the border? Launch a general strike? Stage a military coup? Paul Kavanagh knows another way. All you need is one man with a gun. A man named Miles Dorn. This is Miles Dorn speaking: “Jocelyn, I first killed a man when I was seventeen years old. I killed him because he was a Serb and I was a Croat. At the time this seemed reason enough. Since then I literally cannot count the men I have killed. I do not know their number.” Consider Miles Dorn, inactive, retired, tucked away in a quiet college town. Reading his books, cooking his meals, tutoring an occasional pupil. Cultivating his garden. A bomb defused, an antique firearm with the firing pin safely removed. Until another man named Heidigger replaces the missing part and puts five bullets in the chambers. And then once again Miles Dorn is in a world in which the hatreds of a few become the hatreds of millions, in which terror is the only road to power and ruthless cynicism the only path to survival. He reads his books, cooks his meats, gives German lessons. And he sets in motion a chilling ans savage scenario for the destruction of American democracy

When Jimmie John Hall and Betty Dienhardt found each other, they filled all the lonely corners of their young lives with love and hope. It would result in the brutal murders of fourteen innocent people