HARVARD AND THE UNABOMBER: THE EDUCATION OF AN AMERICAN TERRORIST. By ALSTON CHASE. W. W Norton. 432 pp. $26.95.

BEGINNING IN 1978 and continuing until he was apprehended in 1996, Theodore Kaczynski manufactured and mailed sixteen bombs to prominent Americans working in biological and computer science and environment technology. Dubbed the "Unabomber" by the FBI, he killed three people and cruelly maimed eleven others in these attacks. When captured, he had a seventeenth lethal bomb on the shelf requiring only stamps and an address to wend its way to another victim.

In Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, Alston Chase, a philosopher and student of intellectual history, describes Kaczynski's acts, the sufferings he inflicted on the unsuspecting, and how his estranged brother eventually unmasked him once he recognized Theodore's style of thought in the 35,000-word document or "manifesto" he blackmailed the New York Times and Washington Post into publishing. But Chase is not aiming merely to provide a biography of a serial killer. Rather, he wants to describe cultural forces at play in America after World War II--forces that may have provided the energy and motivations for this celebrated terrorist. This latter intention is what makes the book unique and its conclusions worthy of careful examination.

Of special interest is Chase's opinion about the claim, made in Kaczynski's legal defense, that he suffered from some variant of paranoid schizophrenia. After examining Kaczynski's writings and many public statements, Chase concludes (and I agree) that Kaczynski was and is sane. Although Kaczynski tends to expand verbosely on his opinions, his thoughts always remain coherent and directed by a conscious design. He justifies his objectionable behavior not with weird or eccentric delusions but with beliefs about the corruptions of technology, the fragmentation of society, and the growing commercial injury to our planet's environment that plenty of Americans share. Indeed, Chase refers to the ideas in Kaczynski's "manifesto" as clich6s and thus far from delusional.

Schizophrenics express their thoughts in incoherent ways and harbor beliefs unshared by others, usually encompassing a suspicion that they are targets of attention. Kaczynski did not believe that those who were spoiling the world noticed or were in any way interested in him. He believed they were injuring the earth and the culture for all of us and that he--and he hoped others eventually--should find a way to fight back. The assassin attacking from the shadows is not a delusional thinker but a gutless scoundrel.

MUCH OF CHASE'S BOOK is devoted to explaining how Kaczynski became that scoundrel. Kaczynski grew up in a working-class community in Chicago. Aware of their son's intellectual gifts, Kaczynski's parents pushed him to achieve....