The Unicorn's Secret - Softcover

Levy, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451401662 ISBN 13: 9780451401663

Publisher: Onyx, 1990

Synopsis

Offers a portrait of Ira Einhorn, who preached alternative living in the sixties, ushered in the New Age in the early seventies, and who disappeared while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend

About this title

Review:

Originally published in 1990, The Unicorn's Secret tells the strange tale of Ira Einhorn, a counterculture bigwig who hobnobbed with the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin before police discovered the badly decomposed body of his girlfriend Holly Maddux in a trunk in his Philadelphia apartment in 1979. Although Einhorn, known to friends and enemies alike as "The Unicorn," claimed innocence in Maddux's murder, he fled the country after receiving an unusually low bail (and before being found guilty of the crime in absentia in 1983) and didn't surface again until 1997, when he was apprehended by police in France, still proclaiming his innocence. Levy spent 30 months researching the case and the Unicorn's life to write this book, which includes finely painted detail of Einhorn's rise, from his days as a would-be campus leader during the first shock waves of the '60s to his heyday as a respected ecologist, sociologist, and man-about-town in the 1970s. As Levy tracks the collision course between Einhorn and Maddux, a small-town Texas girl from a conservative home, hints of Einhorn's darker side emerge, illustrated by entries from the Unicorn's own diaries, filled with vast wellsprings of inner rage. The danger to Maddux rises palpably as the book nears its grisly conclusion, with Levy finding his own conclusions safely sealed away inside the paper remnants of Einhorn's darkly brilliant mind. --Tjames Madison

About the Author:

Steven Levy is the author of Hackers, which has been in print for more than fifteen years, as well as Insanely Great: The Life & Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything. He is also Newsweek's chief technology writer and has been a contributing writer to Wired since its inception. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

About this edition

• Publisher: Onyx
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0451401662
• ISBN 13: 9780451401663
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 392