The Great Mistake

An exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, about one man's rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder--"engrossing" (Wall Street Journal), "immersive" (The New Yorker), and "seriously entertaining" (The Sunday Times, London).

Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing--on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth--shook the city.

Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.

A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him--yet enlarged it.

Author: Jonathan Lee
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 06/15/2021
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.60h x 6.00w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780525658498

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/08/2021
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2021
Booklist 05/15/2021 pg. 34
Library Journal 06/01/2021 pg. 106
Shelf Awareness 06/15/2021

About the Author
JONATHAN LEE is the author of three novels, most recently High Dive, which was a best book of the year in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle. He lives in New York.