April 19, 1995. The Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City is ravaged by a vicious bombing that claims 168 innocent lives. Two years later, 29-year-old Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Gulf War veteran, is convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. Most of America knows his name. But only McVeigh himself knows exactly what happened on that ill-starred day. And despite his conviction, he has never gone on record in any forum to discuss the bombing.

Until now. Award-winning journalists Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck have been investigating the bombing for more than five years. They have conducted more than 300 interviews, compiling exclusive testimony from federal investigators, family and friends of McVeigh and survivors' and victims' families. And in 1997 they secured an extraordinary coup: in more than 75 hours of interviews, they persuaded Timothy McVeigh to give a complete account of his story -- from his formative childhood experiences, through his days in the Army, to a thorough portrait of the culture of right-wing separatists and gun-show extremism that was the breeding ground for the terrorist plot. It is the deeply unsettling story of an average American son driven to violence by his hatred of government. And its climax -- the first and only inside account of the planning and execution of the bombing -- answers at last the questions that have haunted Oklahoma City and the nation since that April day.

At once an explosive work of journalism and a uniquely American story, American Terrorist will help bring closure to a wound left too long open in our national psyche.

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