Buda's Wagon

Price: 39.95 AUD

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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 gripping 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.