Excerpt: Jed Rubenfeld's "Death Instinct"

Jan. 31, 2011 — -- Best selling author Jed Rubenfeld released his second book "The Death Instinct" where he gives the reader a fictional interpretation of what happened September 16, 1920 when a bomb exploded on Wall Street.

Read an excerpt from the book below, then check out some other books in the "GMA" library.

DEATH IS ONLY THE BEGINNING; afterward comes the hard part.There are three ways to live with the knowledge of death—tokeep its terror at bay. The fi rst is suppression: forget it's coming;act as if it isn't. That's what most of us do most of the time. The second isthe opposite: memento mori. Remember death. Keep it constantly in mind,for surely life can have no greater savor than when a man believes today ishis last. The third is acceptance. A man who accepts death—really acceptsit—fears nothing and hence achieves a transcendent equanimity in the faceof all loss. All three of these strategies have something in common. They'relies. Terror, at least, would be honest.But there is another way, a fourth way. This is the inadmissible option,the path no man can speak of, not even to himself, not even in the quiet ofhis own inward conversation. This way requires no forgetting, no lying, nogroveling at the altar of the inevitable. All it takes is instinct.At the stroke of noon on September 16, 1920, the bells of Trinity Churchbegan to boom, and as if motivated by a single spring, doors fl ew openup and down Wall Street, releasing clerks and message boys, secretariesand stenographers, for their precious hour of lunch. They poured into thestreets, streaming around cars, lining up at favorite vendors, fi lling in aninstant the busy intersection of Wall, Nassau, and Broad, an intersectionknown in the fi nancial world as the Corner—just that, the Corner. Therestood the United States Treasury, with its Greek temple facade, guarded bya regal bronze George Washington. There stood the white-columned NewYork Stock Exchange. There, J. P. Morgan's domed fortress of a bank.In front of that bank, an old bay mare pawed at the cobblestones,hitched to an overloaded, burlap-covered cart—pilotless and blocking traffic. Horns sounded angrily behind it. A stout cab driver exited his vehicle,arms upraised in righteous appeal. Attempting to berate the cartman, whowasn't there, the taxi driver was surprised by an odd, muffl ed noise comingfrom inside the wagon. He put his ear to the burlap and heard an unmistakablesound: ticking.