Buda's Wagon

The brilliant and disturbing 100-year history of the poor mans air force, 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 Yorks Wall Street, killing 40 people. Since Budas prototype the car bomb has evolved into a poor mans 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 agenciesparticularly those of the United States, Israel, India, and Pakistanin 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.