The brilliant and disturbing 100-year history of modern terrorism
and car bombs—the ubiquitous weapon of urban mass destruction
On a September day
in 1920, an angry Italian anarchist named Mario Buda exploded a
horse-drawn wagon filled with dynamite and iron scrap near New York’s
Wall Street, killing 40 people. Since Buda’s prototype the car bomb
has evolved into a “poor man’s air force,” a generic weapon of
mass destruction that now craters cities from Bombay to Oklahoma
City.
In this provocative
history, Mike Davis traces the its worldwide use and development, in
the process exposing the role of state intelligence
agencies—particularly those of the United States, Israel, India,
and Pakistan—in globalizing urban terrorist techniques. Davis
argues that it is the incessant impact of car bombs, rather than the
more apocalyptic threats of nuclear or bio-terrorism, that is
changing cities and urban lifestyles, as privileged centers of power
increasingly surround themselves with “rings of steel” against a
weapon that nevertheless seems impossible to defeat.