cover image The Price of Terror

The Price of Terror

Allan Gerson. HarperCollins Publishers, $25.95 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-06-019761-2

In The Price of Terror: Lessons of Lockerbie for a World on the Brink, Allan Gerson, a former prosecutor of Nazi war crimes, currently a professor of international relations at George Washington University, and Jerry Adler (High Rise), a senior editor at Newsweek, reconstruct the struggle for justice for the bomb victims and their families after the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Gerson, an expert in international law, took up the cause of pursuing the Libyan suspects, even when the U.S. government did little and lawyers told the victims' families that there was no precedent for suing Libya. Gerson and Adler track the tragedy from the moment the bomb exploded, killing 270, through the trial in Scotland. In the aftermath of September 11, this timely account of the legal, political and emotional aftermath of international mass murder will be of interest to many. Photos. (Oct. 24)