"Dubbed "The Mad Bomber" by the press, in the summer and fall of 1969 Sam Melville built and detonated devices in high profile locations in New York City and the Midwest. Captured with the help of a notorious FBI informant, he was sentenced to eighteen years in Attica, where he became one of the leaders of the bloody 1971 prison riot, and was killed under suspicious circumstances. Over twenty-five years of first-hand research by his own son, Joshua Melville, has resulted in a stunning in-depth look at the story of a man who lit the fuse of organizations such as the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. The book takes readers inside the violent bombing cell's beginnings, and through the author's own coming of age in the wake of his father's legacy. Joshua Melville has pieced together the truth about his father, drawing a strong trajectory connecting the past to the present. The result is a comprehensive 360-degree look at a man whose actions made the front pages of national newspapers-ground zero for what some may call domestic terrorism in modern America. A work of both great breadth and depth, told in a very accessible, almost cinematic style that would work brilliantly as an audio book, American Time Bomb answers the question Joshua Melville has asked ever since he was a small boy-Why did my father give up the life of a professional, of a husband and father for that of an underground radical? It is a question he cannot answer until he becomes a father himself. Joshua's revelations are shocking and heartbreaking, his and his father's stories told in a piercing and direct literary voice in this unique father-and-son bio/memoir. Despite their great differences, Sam's spirit lives on strongly in his son. Joshua Melville is considered one of the country's leading artist rights activists and go-to expert witness in the music industry.
