Matthew Pearl's upcoming novel, The Technologists, is a stunning historical thriller based on the early days of America's great institution of learning, MITand a depraved killer teaching Boston to fear its own shadow. In this original eBook short story, Pearl delves further into the turbulent world of nineteenth-century academia to re-create a shocking, real-life, and all-but-forgotten crime. William Barton Rogers will one day become MIT's founder and president. But in 1840 he is still a science professor at the University of Virginia. A tall and commanding intellectual, he epitomizes the strong and liberal ways of ';Mr. Jefferson's University,' a controversial experiment in progressive thought and laissez-faire governance. Then a startling event rocks the school to its foundation. Riots led by masked ';volunteers' have begun roiling the campus, exploiting its attitude toward discipline. When one of his colleagues is brutally slain during the unrest, Rogers must become a man of both words and deeds to capture the killerand keep an essential institution from collapsing around him. Includes a preview of Matthew Pearl's forthcoming novel, The Technologists, which Joseph Finder calls ';the best yet from a true master of the historical thriller.'