'If I Were the Unabomber...'

Fancy a nice little kill-and-tell memoir for a beach read this summer? Don't expect the Unabomber to deliver. Early reports suggest his forthcoming autobiography, "Truth Versus Lies," is every bit as coy as his literary debut, "Industrial Society and Its Future," was turgid. In a copy shown to the New York Times, Theodore Kaczynski fails even to acknowledge, let alone explain, the killing spree to which he pleaded guilty last year. "If he's avoided the only topic readers want to hear about," says TIME correspondent David Jackson, "that would confirm his attorneys' argument that Kaczynski is delusional." While refusing to admit to being the man beneath the hood of America's most notorious police sketch, Kaczynski spares no venom toward the brother who turned him in. David Kaczynski should simply have threatened to expose his brother in the event of further attacks -- "If I were the Unabomber," Kaczynski wrote, "that would have been an effective deterrent."

"He may be reluctant to discuss his bombing campaign because it failed," says Jackson. "Far from rising up to support his 'revolution,' the public rejected him as a mad criminal. Defending the bombing of scientists as a means of advancing an anti-technology agenda sounds foolish and crazy." And if there's one thing Kaczynski hates more than a new technology, it's being called crazy.