Thursday, October 1, 2026
Steve Israel, the former congressman and owner of Theodore’s Books on Audrey Avenue, has written a new novel that blends local history, international espionage and one of the most consequential scientific warnings of the 20th century. “The Einstein Conspiracy,” which released on Nov. 18, follows a Nazi spy network on Long Island in 1939 as it attempts to stop Albert Einstein from alerting President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Germany’s pursuit of an atomic bomb.
Israel, who represented Long Island in Congress for 16 years, said the story began with a moment of unexpected discovery. Several years ago, he was driving on the North Fork when he came across a small cottage he had never noticed. A nearby marker explained that Einstein had lived there briefly in 1939. In that cottage, the physicist drafted the letter that urged Roosevelt to accelerate American research into nuclear fission, a document that helped launch what became the Manhattan Project.
“Literally sitting in my car looking at that cottage the story came to me,” Israel said. “I began thinking about what would have happened had he not sent that letter.”
The novel imagines a team of Nazi agents operating in New York as the FBI races to stop them. Israel said the premise is rooted in fact. Israel said his research revealed details that surprised even him. He had long known of fascist sympathies in the United States before World War II, but was struck by how widespread the movement was.
“A rally at Madison Square Garden attracted 20,000 people,” he said. “There was a community in Yaphank where the streets were named Adolf Hitler Street and Joseph Goering Street and swastika flags flew next to American flags.”
He also found an extensive Nazi spy network in the region.
“They were penetrating our military bases and our defense plants right here on Long Island,” he said. “They would be ferried in and out by German ocean liners. They were so active that J. Edgar Hoover and Roosevelt made a decision that the FBI had to focus on them.”
Einstein himself posed a challenge for Israel as a novelist, who he said was often caricatured in American cultural memory. He wanted to portray a complex figure whose brilliance coexisted with stubbornness and human flaws.
Some of Einstein’s lighter quirks also found their way into the book. He owned a fourteen foot sailboat he kept on Long Island’s Peconic Bay, despite lacking the skills to manage it. “People had to go out and rescue him,” Israel said, “because he could not manage the sailboat.”
“The Einstein Conspiracy” is Israel’s third book, but his first work of historical fiction. His earlier books were political satires written while he was still serving in Congress. He said the shift in genre required a different mindset.
“Political satire is writing with your tongue in your cheek and using humor to make a point,” he said. “Historical fiction, particularly involving spy craft, is much different. You have to keep the reader on the edge of his or her seat, but it has to be plausible and feasible.”
A major challenge was maintaining accuracy without slowing the pace of the narrative.
“When you write historic fiction, you risk writing nonfiction,” he said. “Every day I had to be conscious of keeping the story moving without cheating the actual history.”
Israel said he spent a full year researching the book and continued to reference source material as he wrote. His reading included works on Einstein, Nazi covert operations in America and Germany’s own nuclear program. Much of the story unfolds across Long Island, a choice that Israel said feels natural given his own connection to the region.
“It is not just history. It is a thrilling adventure, but it rests on actual historic events that changed the world,” he said. “And so much of it is local to Long Island.”
