num_pages: 228
description: 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 brilliant and disturbing history, Mike Davis traces 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.
language: English
title: Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
titlecomplete: Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
genres: Terrorism, History, 21st Century, Technology, War, Military History, 20th Century, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Politics
ratings_count: 520
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Lannan Literary Award
category: Non-Fiction
publisher: Verso