There were no air raid sirens. No missiles or bombs. No mushroom clouds. No panic in the streets. The end, when it came, was like nothing we ever expected. First hit was a small Gulf Coast city. Seventy thousand dead, just like that. Then Rome. Flags toppled and nations crumbled, as people began dying by the millions. Soon there would be no one left alive, except for the lucky few who were genetically immune. One man—pilot Nick Tesla—knew what was happening. He had survived and escaped the first Zone of Death. The army has sent him back in, determined to stop the destruction of humanity. Until Tesla sees reality—a mad scientist, the father of the unknown type of radiation, who perhaps isn’t so mad at all. When the tables are turned, Tesla decides to push the button and send the world back to the beginning…so civilization can have a fresh start and avoid all the mistakes of the past. With a new introduction by Jeff Shaara, the author's son, and a New York Times bestselling novelist in his own right.
Author
Michael Shaara was an American writer of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction. He was born to Italian immigrant parents (the family name was originally spelled Sciarra, which in Italian is pronounced the same way) in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University in 1951, and served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne division prior to the Korean War. Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines in the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. He later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. The stress of this and his smoking caused him to have a heart attack at the early age of 36; from which he fully recovered. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Shaara died of another heart attack in 1988. Shaara's son, Jeffrey Shaara, is also a popular writer of historical fiction; most notably sequels to his father's best-known novel. His most famous is the prequel to The Killer Angels, Gods and Generals. Jeffrey was the one to finally get Michael's last book, For Love of the Game, published three years after he died. Today there is a Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, established by Jeffrey Shaara, awarded yearly at Gettysburg College.
