Joseph Conrad published his novel The Secret Agent in weekly installments from 1906 to 1907. Its plot revolves around an attempt to destroy, with dynamite, the Greenwich Observatory. Although Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—was a wide-ranging reader, he was known to have read Conrad repeatedly, and the parallels between The Secret Agent and Kaczynski’s own life prompted the FBI to contact Conrad scholars in an attempt to better understand his campaign of mail-bomb terror. Stranger in a Strange Land Penguin Group USA The Heinlein Society insists that it isn’t true. Charles Manson is said to have denied having read the book. Yet claimed connections between Manson’s "Family" and Robert Heinlein’s novel