Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb

by Mike Davis

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Terrorism, Politics, War, Technology, 21st Century

228 pages, Hardcover

First published April 17, 2007

About the author

Mike Davis was a social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He was best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. He was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lived in San Diego.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Shiite suicide bomber was largely a Frankenstein monster of Ariel Sharon’s deliberate creation.

3.5 stars. A grim book which offers a panoply of explosion description. There are almost a hundred years of accounts depicting burnt and dismembered corpses amidst countless descriptions of blast craters. We trace the history from the initial anarchist deployment on Wall Street through the birth of Israel, through the masterful use of such in Vietnam and Northern Ireland before the tactic evolved into suicide bombing in Beirut and found its apex in Baghdad and Kabul. It isn't simply a poor man's air force but an anonymous means of terror, routinely used by the dominant powers in conflicts (US, UK, Israel) to propagate fear and demoralize. The car bomb isn't a linear evolution of warfare but an improvisation, a zigzag, much as the Mongols would douse cats in accelerant and pitch them into fortresses. The theme somehow dovetails nicely with the attendant theories of drone warfare.

[Meem Arafat Manab · Rating 4 out of 5]

দেশের এই অবস্থায় ভূমিকম্পের পরেই যে কারণে মারা যাওয়ার সম্ভাব্যতা সবচেয়ে বেশি, তার সম্পর্কে ধারণা আরেকটু বাড়াতেই এই বই হাতে নিলাম।

বেশ কিছু ধামাকাদার ব্যাপার জানা গেলো, যেমন লেহী নামের এক প্রাক-ইজরায়েলী সংগঠন কীভাবে প্রথমদিকে গাড়ি বোমার ব্যভার শুরু করে, বা হেজবুল্লাহ যে একটা সময়ে নিরীহ জনগণ এড়ায়ে চলত, আলকায়েদা যে সেটা এড়ায়ে চলে নাই কখনো, ইত্যাদি। অনেক কিছুই আগে ভাসাভাসা জানা, পড়ার পরও যে সব তথ্য পাইপাই করে মনে থাকবে এমন সম্ভব না। ভদ্রলোক গত একশত বছরের আন্তর্জাতিক রাজনীতি, আন্তর্জাতিক সন্ত্রাস, আর বেশ কিছু যুদ্ধের ইতিহাসের ঠিক যেটুকু অংশ গাড়ি বোমার সাথে সম্পৃক্ত ততখানি তুলে এনেছেন। প্রচুর সারণি, প্রচুর সংবাদপত্রের উদ্ধৃতি।
পড়ে ব্যাপারটা বেশ ভয়াবহই মনে হলো। আমার শহরে এ জিনিস ফুটুক, নির্ঘাত বেহেড না হলে চাওয়া সম্ভব না। না যেনো ফুটে। একেকটা ছবি দেখে আক্কেল গুড়ুম হয়ে যায়।
ঝকঝকে সব ছবি, সুন্দর লেখার হাত। ভদ্রলোক যেখানে সেখানে কথার মারপ্যাচ দেখিয়েছেন।
খেটেখুটে লেখা বই, যা পড়লাম, তার চেয়ে বেশি আশা নিয়ে পড়তে বসি নাই। তথ্যগত-উপাত্তগত ভুল থাকলে বলতে পারি না। তবে এই বই পড়ে যাবতীয় সার-এর উপর শ্রদ্ধা বেড়ে গেলো।
সিদ্ধান্তগত কোনো মতামত নাই, কারণ এইটা একটা সংবাদপত্র গোছের বই। লেখক সিদ্ধান্ত দেয় নাই কোনো। তবে গাড়ি বোমার ভবিষ্যত আমাদের জন্য আশঙ্কাজনক এবং গাড়ি বোমার জন্য বাম্পার মনে হচ্ছে তার শেষ অধ্যায় পড়ে।

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Buda's wagon truly has become the hot rod of the apocalypse," Davis concludes. Quips like that offer some ironic relief in this relentless genealogy of vehicle-borne terrorism.

At his worst, Davis has the favorite vice of American pundits (left or right) of simply channel-surfing the misery of everyone-but-us in advancing a unified theory whose coherence depends much on its superficiality. That said, this is the same Mike Davis whose "City of Quartz" I read somewhere around 15 years ago, and found to be the most astute urban history of Los Angeles I'd ever read. There is definitely some continuity between these works (and also with his inbetween works which read like Foucault on global capitalism).

At it's best, "Buda's Wagon" is an insightful parody of military histories that demonstrate the irresistable might of the mighty by virtue of their ever-more-expensive toys. Through copious historical example beginning with the first car bomb (exploded not in the Middle East nor any other part of the third world nor in mafialand, but on Wall Street in 1920 by a socialist sympathizer to Sacco and Vanzetti) culminating in the current situation in Iraq, Davis argues that the "poor man's air force" poses a far more pervasive and elusive threat than that of nuclear weapons or any other high-tech weaponry. The ubiquity of such components as ammonium nitrate fertilizer combined with the impossibility of screening weapons that can inflict casualties from an ordinary vehicle located hundreds of yards from its target make car bombs perennially attractive to the bad guys.

The politics of the book are not, by the way, overtly leftist. He has no sympathy for Hezbollah, Escobar, the Tamil tigers and the Sicilian mob. Nor for the socialist who started it all. At the same time, it's hard not to come out of the book stunnned at how much the tactic of the car bomb exceeds the usual assumptions. For example, the first use of car bombs in the Holy Land was by Jews. A militant wing of the Zionist movement who commit what we would now call terrorist acts against government and civilian targets in British Palestine, seeking to provoke civil unrest that could be used to their benefit. Similar tactics were employed in Algiers by militant representatives of the European settler population hoping to provoke the native Algerians to violence that the French military would be compelled to suppress. Yes, counter to that oft-heard right-wing conventional wisdom, it's not just something about Islam. In the past century, there have been Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists perfectly willing to kill civilians indiscriminately.

Once one shifts perspective to the tactic of car bombing (and why the hell not given how long we've spent obsessed with the tactic of "terrorism" as if it stands for a political ideology), it is difficult to imagine how any kind of "surge" or surveillance technology or military strategy could possibly make the world safe. If there is any "message" to be gleaned from Davis's book, surely it is that our only hope lies in working to undermine the underlying conditions that produce terrorists in the first place. Because we are not capable of taking away their ability to hurt us.

[Josephus FromPlacitas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonder if it's a sign that I'm getting older that I'm not as enamored with Mike Davis' style as when I was red-eyed collegiate trying to keep up with whatever the cool smart kids liked to read. The thing that's beginning to exasperate me is his assumption of my cultural-historical knowledge, the way he'll drop countless terms, historical events and references without describing what they were. Sure, I'm supposed to be historically literate, I get it, that's my obligation and I can use Wikipedia to instantly look up just about anything. And I understand that you want to write a book about interesting things without having to over-fatten it with summaries of events that may have been better described elsewhere. But would it kill you shove in a quick description? How bad could it be to just tack on a subordinate or parenthetical clause?

Minor example: he says on page 79 that Hezbollah fighters in Beruit in the early 1980s had "an obvious understanding of Viet Cong tactics in the Battle of Saigon." Cool. But, um, I don't. Could you throw me a bone, Mister Davis? What were the relevant Viet Cong tactics in the Battle of Saigon that Hezbollah understood? Or am I just being a lazy, whiny reader?

When Planet of Slums came out a few years ago, I eagerly bought the first copy I could get my hands on. But as I tried to fight my way through the first chapter, the notecard on which I write down unfamiliar words or events that I need to look up filled up frighteningly quickly. Battered by bindonvilles and chawls, alongside jargon and theoretical references I could barely penetrate, I gave up. Buda's Wagon seemed a little more manageable, a mere 200-pages about shit that blows up, how hard could it be?

And there is something darkly, evilly fun about this book. You can almost imagine Ramzi Yousef as some sort of inverted James Bond reimagined for this nightmare world we inhabit. He travels the planet's exotic locales -- Manhattan, Bangkok, the Phillippines, Pakistan's impenetrable mountains -- wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting world. Instead of specially prepared BMWs or Audis paid for by car companies buying product placements, he pulls up in Nissan refrigerator trucks or Toyota delivery vans, stuffed with villainous concoctions of fuel oil, fertilizer and aluminum dust. The corpse of the stolen truck's driver, stuffed in the cargo area with the cleverly designed bomb stands in for the henchman's lackey that Bond would so casually take out.

I like the book's coverage of what are (in the US media) usually such obscure fighting groups, be they the French-Algerians of the OAS, the Black Tigers of Tamil Sri Lanka, the Senderistas of Peru, or the Stern Gang and its offshoots in Palestine. It does hop around from conflict to conflict in service of its theme of talking about car bombs, but I don't particularly mind that.

Some of the interesting quotes:
Contrasting "Green Zones" like the one in Baghdad and other specially secured installations in the world's cities, Davis writes: "The vast majority of us will continue to live in the 'Red Zones,' vulnerable to sinister Fiats and Ryder vans. As Rhiannon Talbot points out in a reflection on the IRA's Bishopsgate bombing, 'No matter how many police officers are on duty or how many special constables and auxiliary police officers are drafted we cannot guard every building of significance in the country nor every street where hundreds could die if a devastating bomb were to be detonated.' Such common sense, of course, must be pounded into the heads of politicians and police officials besotted with fantasies of 'beating the terrorists' with panoptical surveillance, ion detection technology, roadblocks, and, that sine qua non, the permanent suspension of civil liberties." (p. 194)

He also quotes Irish journalist Tim Pat Coogan, who says the need to decommission "the IRA arsenal, so fetishized by Loyalist and British politicians, 'was actively debunked, not by an Irish spokesperson as one might have imagined, but by a senior RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] officer,' who also offered a remarkable assessment of the role of car bombs in the 'Troubles.'

"'This is not a military issue, it is a political issue. The major portion of damage and death caused over the entire period of the troubles did not come from hand guns and rifles, from home-made mortars, or even from Semtex explosive. It was caused by the fertilizer bombs which can be made up by anyone with a schoolboy knowledge of chemistry. Two men with shovels can make up a thousand pound bomb in a Fermanagh cowshed and, if for some reason the operation has to be aborted, they can decommission it again, all within twelve hours. You can't decommission shovels. It's minds which have to be decommissioned.'" (pp. 194-195)

This quote is from Milt Bearden, one key CIA official who channeled arms, money and know-how to the Afghan mujaheddin in the mid-1980s -- that is to say, he is no starry-eyed peacenik. I saw him talk at a conference put on by Sandia National Labs here in Albuquerque, I think in 2002 or late 2001. He wrote in the New York Times in 2003 that, "There are two stark lessons in the history of the 20th century: no nation that launched a war against another sovereign country ever won. And every nationalist-based insurgency against a foreign occupation ultimately succeeded." (p. 179)

Referring to the broad mix of bombers who emerged in the 1990s: "In contrast to the old, unitary menace of the Soviet Union, Washington now faced a chaotic spectrum of enemies, spontaneously generated by the contradictions of globalization as well as the blowback of past policies: rogue assets like Sheik Rahman, megalomaniac bomb-school graduates like [Ramzi] Yousef, hometown militiamen like McVeigh, self-organized Islamists like the Riyadh bombers, super-Capones like [Pablo] Escobar, and remnant Maoists like Sendero Luminoso -- and then there was the enduring spectre of Hezbollah's Imad Mugniyah, the General Giap of urban guerrilla warfare. Calling them all "terrorists" -- a playground epithet in the serious business of geopolitics -- hardly advanced anyone;s understanding of the post-Cold War world." (p. 149).

I really like that phrase, "a playground epithet in the serious world of geopolitics." It really captures the lethally childish state of my country's political scene and political thinking.

Here's an awesomely phrased death threat sent out by Pablo Escobar's cronies: "We are friends of Pablo Escobar and we are ready to do anything for him. We are capable of executing you at any place on this planet...in the meantime, you will see the fall, one by one, of all the members of your family...For calling Mr. Escobar to trial you will remain without forebears or descendants in your genealogical tree." (p. 110). Theatrical and ghoulish indeed.

Reagan-era CIA director William Casey, I learned on page 92, was a fervent Franco supporter during his college days in the 1930s. I often forget about the unashamedly pro-fascist community that thrives in the US right. But every time you see that or Thomas Frank's recounting of international festivals that Jack Abramoff organized on behalf of Jonas Fucking Savimbi, it makes my mental jaw drop. Shouldn't college students in the 1930s been dreaming of running off to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade? But no. Ultimately, the most powerful people in the world end up being the ones who rooted for the annihilation of the anti-fascist fighters, the destruction of Spanish democracy, or stable African independence.

But again and again, the Cheneyite philosophy of "dealing with the dark side" proves counter-productive. Casey in 1980s sends support to the Afghan anti-Soviets by way of Pakistani dictator Muhammed Zia and his Islamist intelligence chief at the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The ISI "vetted the selection of trainees and generally restricted the flow of arms and explosives to the four most extreme Islamist groups, fatally weakening the more moderate and modern factions. 'By the late 1980s,' writes [Steve] Coll, 'the ISI had effectively eliminated all the secular, leftist, and royalist political parties that had first formed when Afghan refugees fled Communist rule.'" (p. 93)

Casey, who saw "political Islam and the Catholic Church as natural allies" against the Kremlin, was "delighted" with the carnage in Kabul and Afghanistan. "It was the greatest transfer of terrorist technology in history: there was no need for angry Islamists to take car-bomb extension courses from Hezbollah when they could matriculate in a CIA-supported urban-sabotage course in Pakistan's frontier provinces." (pp. 94-95)

Finally, I want to write down a quote from Robert Pape's "celebrated study [showing] that most suicide terrorists are actually local patriots responding to collective injustice, above all the humiliation of foreign occupation, especially when the occupier is seen as seeking to impose an alien religion or value system.

"'Few suicide attackers are social misfits, criminally insane, or professional losers. Most fit a nearly opposite profile: typically they are psychologically normal, have better than average economic prospects for their communities, are deeply integrated into social networks and emotionally attached to their national communities. They see themselves as sacrificing their lives for the nation's good...he bottom line, then, is that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation.'"

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

The car bomb, or VBIED (Vehicle Born Improved Explosive Device), if you have an MSAF (Milspec Acronym Fetish) is the guerrilla smart bomb. In its more basic form, it marries the mundane infrastructure of urban life like trucks and driveways, to easily available explosives like ANFO and diesel fuel, to a deadly weapon. Whether abandoned in a parking garage or brazenly crashed through the front gates of an embassy by a suicide bomber, the car bomb is a way for poor organizations to hit sensitive targets with precision.

Davis rolls through the long history of the car bomb, from its invention by Italian anarchist Mario Buda, to its perfection by the Zionist terrorist group Irgun, to its proliferation across the world in the hands of the Tamil Tigers, the IRA, and Al Qaeda in Iraq. There's an odd tonal disconnect between coldly clinical history and near-conspiratorial glee at CIA blowback, as car bombs disrupt French, British, and American imperialism, but in a short and breezy book the style mostly works.

Davis is by training a Marxist urbanist, and he's best in noting that car bombs are more than cheap precision weapons used to hit hard targets like embassies and barracks. The generalized threat of car bombs is paralyzing, demanding a 'Ring of Steel' to protect downtowns and upper class districts. Indiscriminate in their death, car bombs can be used against soft targets like schools and markets to foster ethnic violence and sidetrack peace negotiations. Finally, given the ease by which vehicles circulate through cities, there's no way to ensure security. Buda's wagon is the hotrod of the apocalypse.

There's not much original research in this book, and in some ways the threat of car bombs has been supplemented by the pure kinetic energy of ISIS vehicular attacks. Still, afun little military history worth a read.

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A grim but gripping read. Davis deftly braids disparate bands bringing distributed destruction, unsuspecting or unscrupulous dignitaries and urban disenfranchised both deploying and devastated by a bomb delivery device boldly and dutifully designed with despicable disregard for death and damage.

[Rolin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a list of every time someone used a car to blow something or someone up. and there's nothing you, me, or the government can do about it.

ban cars. who ever has heard of a bicycle bomb?

[6655321 · Rating 2 out of 5]

the big problem with this piece isn't that Davis doesn't understand an important technology (because he clearly does understand how carbombs are applied to asymetrical warfare) but this really vapid liberal analysis of historical events that infects his writing. Like, perhaps rather than taking this weird *no one is at fault but we can agree if a carbomb kills a child it is the fault of the person who planted it* like his really weird laying of blame on the ETA for a failure of the police to evacuate a building? Or where he will admit that certain governments are absolutely despotic but will act like carbombing the housing district of their police is somehow morally different than carbombing for property damage? I guess what i am circling on here is that because he won't render judgement on things (opting for BOTH SIDES ARE AT FAULT) there isn't really anything to his analysis other than PHWAW car bombs are pretty dangerous and really switch the terrain of conflict? Which like, is i think almost self evident, but what the ready availability of the ingredients to and application of an ANFO bomb *means* is utterly missing. What does this technology *do* other than create a cat and mouse game (because i will guarantee it is something) and *why* do different groups use a carbomb? why does Davis refuse to situation the usage within particular contexts (ex. the Provos use of the carbomb was by the playbook to force military occupation of Ireland and force the contradiction) while some applications are based in martyrdom (which he reviews the psych literature on to talk about how suicide bombers make *sense* but then goes back to calling car bombers crazy in this *really* frustrating way) and never looks at the psychology of *why* someone would choose an attack that in the best case nets a K/D ratio that is satisfying to someone that definitely isn't them? How does media culture and spectacle play into this? Why is this book 90% a genealogy of a tactic and 10% interesting unanswered questions? Isn't the transmission and adaptation of an idea interesting for more reasons than it simply happened? IDK

[Aaron Edelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really like mike davis. I read "CITY OF QUARTZ", awhile back and it gave a sharp pair of lenses to analyze SoCal. Buda's Wagon is written in the same sensational style. Mike Davis has really figured out a beautiful way to use the language of academia to say "MAN, can you believe this SHIT?!". I appreciate the fact that Mike Davis goes to great lengths to condemn the senselessness of a car bomb (especially one that kills innocents) while admiring its power in the hands of people with a political agenda. There were a few sections that fell short, hence the four star rating. Its a short book, that skips for example commuter bus bombs in Israel. Makes me wonder what else was left out for brevity's sake. Mike Davis is ALWAYS a good read.

My goodreads buddy Suzanne is ALWAYS right. Especially when it comes to books!

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim volume is not Davis's best, but ably retells the history of the car bomb from makeshift device to wanton tool of indiscriminate terror. I'd be interested to read an updated version, given the proliferation of the ad hoc, lone wolf car bomber since 2007. I'd also welcome Davis's take on ISIS and the shift in tactics, from the vehicle as explosives transport to a tool of kinetic destruction itself. But reading this, you realize a) the car bomb has been around longer than one might realize, and b) it portends increasing lethality ahead.

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good companion volume to Benedict Anderson's Under Three Flags.

[Rohit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gruesome collection of essays on the use of car bombs throughout history, the various groups that took up the tactic, and the evolution of the technology. There isn't a ton of analysis or theorization here, which would have been interesting (i.e. I started having questions of the actual supply chain of ammonium nitrate and the like), but Mike Davis' writing style is still thoroughly enjoyable even when he's just listing off different attacks during a particular war. The most interesting analytical throughline that does exist, however, is probably the tracing of the car bomb's relationship with the CIA, and their use of terrorism in Lebanon and Afghanistan, and the subsequent blowback. Also, too bad Mike never got to write an additional chapter on the insane Mad Max DIY armored truck bombs that ISIS pioneered.

[Cabot · Rating 4 out of 5]

True to its title, this is a very brief history of the car bomb in nice digestible little chapters. This is my first (but not last) experience with Davis, and his argument— that the car bomb represents a democratization of violence that simultaneously turns urban environments into hellscapes of fear— is well-made. Overall an insightful read and worth the quick amount of time I spent on it.

[Harris]

I fuckin love Mike Davis. Smart and pissed. RIP.

[Misha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book feels like a 2.5-day cruise of all Europe: glitzy and with
style but ultimately shallow and unsatisfying.

The title is catchy. Davis' prose is lively and pithy. This book
however, does not measure up to his earlier works such as "Prisoners
of the American Dream". I think the problem is with the subject
itself. All Davis' discussion to the contrary, a car bomb is a
relatively unsophisticated device. One bomber does not have much to
learn from another: some fertilizer, fuel oil, a detonator and a
stolen car and one has a poor-man air-force. Thus, it is difficult to
cover the history of a car bomb from a purely technical
perspective. Like one could do with, for example, fighter planes or
assault rifles. The action of a car bomb is pretty similar so there is
little to describe: a loud bang, smoke, flying debris and body parts,
mangled and bloodied people wringing in agony. Davis tries to be
discreet in his explosion descriptions, yet it gets repetitive by the
end of the book.

So the car bombs is a ruthless and indiscriminate tactic employed by
guerrillas of all stripes. The most fascinating aspect of the carbombs
is social. Why does a certain group or a movement chose to use
carbombing? And this is where Davis falls short. The format of the
book does not allow him to describe in detail each individual
movement. Instead, he tries to quickly and impartially describe the
movement and proceed to the bombing itself. The effect however is that
he lumps together the truly progressive independence movements with
the cults like Sendero Luminoso and everything in between. He does,
however, cite good books that cover each individual conflicts in
sufficient enough detail to explain the causes, the reasons and the
dynamic of the struggle in each individual case: "The Vietnam Wars
1945-1990" by Marilyn B. Young, "A Secret History of the IRA" by Ed
Moloney, or "Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon" by Robert
Fisk. The facts about the conflicts that I am not familiar with such
as the details about the Stern Gang of Palestine and Arab reprisals
are quite interesting. The coverage of the ongoing conflict in Iraq is
certainly incomplete, Davis' coverage of it feels truncated.

[Perez Malone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buda���s Wagon details the sordid history of the car bomb from its first incarnation as a wagon bomb parked on Wall Street to the current horror that is US occupied Iraq. It also sheds light on a subject I had no knowledge of, which is the terrorist campaign fought by the Israelis against the British. The Stern Gang introduced the car bomb to the troubled area while fighting their colonial masters but they soon turned their sadistic weapon on the Arab populace, who of course retaliated in kind. We all know how that story never ends, so I���ll not bore you with further details, and neither does Davis, though he does bore us with further details of other conflicts. Normally I love his books but this one fell flat for me; it takes too much time to discuss the details of individual bombings and the thousands of people who are killed by them, and not enough time discussing the broader significance. Essentially, it could have been shorter though it is already quite short. I just didn���t find myself being particularly interested in the details of bombing campaigns and found the brief descriptions of the overall political atmosphere and the conditions leading up to the terrorist attacks to be too light and sometimes confusing. Chapters are generally under twenty pages and the vast majority of those pages are dedicated to the describing the impact of the bombs in a literal and physical way. I found myself not following the non-bomb related events but wanting to know more about the individual struggles. Too often Davis also assumes the reader has more knowledge about the struggles than I think most people have, at least that was the case with me. I do enjoy reading his prose though so I struggled through the sometimes tedious parts and found the book to be on the whole enjoyable, but not nearly as packed with intriguing information as his other efforts. Many of the pages devoted to details of a given bomb, how it was made, how it was set, how much damage it did, snuck by with me zoning out thinking of other books by Mike Davis, all of which are great and should be read by everybody.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buda’s Wagon details the sordid history of the car bomb from its first incarnation as a wagon bomb parked on Wall Street to the current horror that is US occupied Iraq. It also sheds light on a subject I had no knowledge of, which is the terrorist campaign fought by the Israelis against the British. The Stern Gang introduced the car bomb to the troubled area while fighting their colonial masters but they soon turned their sadistic weapon on the Arab populace, who of course retaliated in kind. We all know how that story never ends, so I’ll not bore you with further details, and neither does Davis, though he does bore us with further details of other conflicts. Normally I love his books but this one fell flat for me; it takes too much time to discuss the details of individual bombings and the thousands of people who are killed by them, and not enough time discussing the broader significance. Essentially, it could have been shorter though it is already quite short. I just didn’t find myself being particularly interested in the details of bombing campaigns and found the brief descriptions of the overall political atmosphere and the conditions leading up to the terrorist attacks to be too light and sometimes confusing. Chapters are generally under twenty pages and the vast majority of those pages are dedicated to the describing the impact of the bombs in a literal and physical way. I found myself not following the non-bomb related events but wanting to know more about the individual struggles. Too often Davis also assumes the reader has more knowledge about the struggles than I think most people have, at least that was the case with me. I do enjoy reading his prose though so I struggled through the sometimes tedious parts and found the book to be on the whole enjoyable, but not nearly as packed with intriguing information as his other efforts. Many of the pages devoted to details of a given bomb, how it was made, how it was set, how much damage it did, snuck by with me zoning out thinking of other books by Mike Davis, all of which are great and should be read by everybody.

[M- S__ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read. Car bombing is one of those things I have vivid mental images associated with, but that I had never really challenged myself to think deeply about. Verso does a great job of seeking out that kind of subject matter. So much of this book was interesting because it was a history I wasn't familiar with and much of Davis' argument is a well reasoned critique of our approach to handling the war on terror. We are still in many ways attacking the wrong problem 8 years after the publication of this book.

But what most stood out to me was first his description of car bombing as the "poor man's air force" (which struck me as embarrassingly self evident once I wrapped my head around it) and second a point he made within that same chapter about how important it is for a car bomb to be "loud." In almost all of the examples listed throughout this history, that stood out as a common theme. The car bomb is the ultimate instrument of terror because of its innocuousness (in one chapter planted exclusively in a middle style of Italian car) and the chaos it creates in the "loud" explosion after detonation. But also in many ways car bombs were loud because they were giving a voice to a marginalized group. They act ass both bomb and megaphone. Car bombing has been a way to undermine the narrative we were fed over the last fifty years about how the US has had impossibly complicated conflicts under control.

Davis' contempt for the practice of car bombing obviously shone through, but no less so than his horror at the incompetence or nefariousness of the institutions and governments those bombings representatively attacked. In that way I found this book to be an incredible read. The only drawback for me was that a couple of chapters felt like they were just sort of lazily pulled straight from other books I've already read (specifically Killing Pablo and The Looming Tower) with little added or divergent commentary.

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The car bomb is like a bomb dropped from a strategic bomber, but it is much cheaper and easier to make. It was invented in 1920 by an Italian-American anarchist, who detonated a horse-drawn cart full of dynamite and scrap iron at Wall Street, killing 40 and injuring 200, in revenge for the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. It was refined by the Stern Gang in British-occupied Palestine, who attacked the Arabs and the British and provoked retaliatory attacks by British deserters sympathizing with the Arabs. After World War II just about every ethnic, religious, political and criminal armed movement used car bombs: the OAS in Algeria, the Viet Cong in Vietnam, the Sicilian Mafia in Italy, the Provisional IRA in the British Isles, the ANC in South Africa, various armed groups in Beirut, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the USA, al-Qaeda in Tanzania, Kenya and New York City, and the Sunni and Shia militias in Iraq - and this isn't all! Unfortunately, Davis's Marxism and conspiracy theorizing make parts of this book hard to believe. Were Afghan insurgents who fought the Soviet Army really "[CIA Director Bill] Casey's hirelings"? Was British intelligence really involved in the bombings in the Republic of Ireland in 1974? Like the suicide bomber, the car bomb is the weapon of the future. It is possible to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons by controlling the supply of uranium, but how can you stop the proliferation of weapons made of fertilizer and fuel oil inside a Ryder truck? In the last paragraph Davis pays lip service to reducing socio-economic inequalities and allowing self-determination; well, Chechnya was de facto allowed self-determination in 1996; yet in 1999 Shamil Basayev invaded Daghestan and Chechen separatists (presumably it wasn't the FSB) started blowing up apartment buildings in Russian cities.

[Scotty · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Although their founder, the handsome and charismatic Avram Stern (who was murdered by British police in 1942), was an admirer of Mussolini who had shocked the Jewish community by proposing a military alliance with the Axis powers in 1941, Lohamei Herut Israel (or LEHI) - as Stern's group was officially known - was characterized less by uniformity of ideology (which individually ranged from the extreme Right to the far Left) than by a ferocious, almost suicidal dedication to driving the British, "the main enemy," from Palestine."

Did he write the whole book the night before his publisher's due date? Yeesh. An interesting topic. Definitely worth the read. Some parallels drawn with little evidence (offhand I remember his misleading analysis of the Hezbollah bombing in Argentina that is not believed by Argentinian, Israeli, US, or Hezbollah officials...there were more, and their appearance can be frustrating, but whatever). take the book with a grain of salt. it has plenty of fat to chew on.

[Sheehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will probably have me much more aware of my surroundings for the next few months...

The book is a short history of the car bomb from its humble beginnings on Wall Street to its evolution in scope and methodology as a globalized means of leveling the battlefield in just about every theater, no longer just wars.

The big idea that came across is that the very ubiquity of resources available to make big bangs, makes a military/security solution impossible, and really leads only to the logical necessity for political and social solutions to the issues which disenfranchise would be planners from getting so marginalized they wanna make you go boom.

Davis is awesome at clearly laying out subject matter, he addresses a general time line of car bombs and uses the chapters to stop along the way to dwell on innovations and evolutions in car bombs.

[Electric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Großartig recherchierte Geschichte und Analyse der Autobombe als "Luftwaffe des kleinen Mannes" seit den 1920er Jahren. Von den USA und Israel über den Libanon, Irland, Spanien, Vietnam, Algerien Indien, Sri Lanka und Tschetschenien bis zum Irak zeigt Davis die wechselvolle Beziehung zwischen Besatzungsmächten, deren geheimen Agenturen und lokalen Widerstandsbewegungen im Lichte der zerstörerischen Kraft einer billigen Technologie die noch eine "große" Zukunft haben wird. Interessant wie wenig von dem ständig tobenden Kämpfen und den tausenden Toten in den Köpfen bleibt wenn die Zeitungen weiterziehen. Etwas trocken zu lesen aber sehr lohnenswert. Und sei es nur weil man vieles auf wikipedia nachschlagen möchte um die Hintergründe der Konflikte besser zu verstehen in denen diese Technologie eingesetzt wurde und wird. Deutsche Ausgabe bei Assoziation A.

[A.Samir · Rating 4 out of 5]

حلو

بيتكلم عن تاريخ السيارات المفخخة واستخدامها كسلاح للمقاومة أو الإرهاب، وتتبعها منذ أول استخدام (عربية كارو في أمريكا) لحد العراق
الكتاب بينتهي عند 2006
الاستخدام الأول للسيارات الميكانيكية المففخة كان على يد العصابات الصهيونية في فلسطين قبل 48 (ما شاء الله عليهم سباقين دايما)
وبعد كدة استخدمت في أماكن كتير، آسيا وأفريقيا وأوروبا وأمريكا
بيمر على فترة الحرب الأهلية في لبنان والتفجيرات المشهورة لمقر المارينز والمظليين الفرنسيين، وحرب فيتنام، وما بعد 11 سبتمبر في أوروبا
والغزو الأمريكي للعراق وأفغانستان، وأنشطة القاعدة
والإرهاب الفرنسي في الجزائر
والجيش الجمهوري الأيرلندي
والحرب السوفيتية في افغانستان والشيشان
**
نقصته نجمة عشان بيكتب أسامي الأحزاب أو التنظيمات بلغتها الأصلية، فالحاجات الأقرب للعربي كان ممكن فهمها
لكن أسامي أخرى تعتمد على الفرنسي أو لغات آسيوية كان من الصعب نطقها وفهم معناها

[Nadir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkably quick read about the history of the car bomb (not terrorist bombing in general - specific to the car bomb). An absolutely fascinating read as it covers the first use (in the USA of all places) back in 1920, and subsequent use throughout the world as terrorists, criminals, and guerrillas adopted and adapted it to their specific needs. The IRA's and ETA's use of it as an economic weapon against established industries rather than the sovereign government was especially interesting.

The final message, unfortunately, is don't expect it to ever go away, as it represents the Poor Man's air force and so long as there is struggle between technologically unequal groups, there will be car bombs.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Davis' brief history documents the car bombs exponential curving explosion from the 1920's-era bombing of Wall Street through modern IED-laden Iraq, and really it is a history of almost all armed struggles since at least the 1980's. The car bomb has been both the "air force of the poor" and a tool of choice for discriminating clandestine forces of developed nations. This is a fascinating book that easily could have been 1000 pages longer, which is both a feature and a bug. For much of the context to the conflicts Davis addresses, you'll have to look elsewhere. But with excellent end notes, at least it isn't difficult to figure out where to start.

[david-baptiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remember the post-oil-crisis-Apocalyptic Outback landscapes of Mad Max II: The Road Warrior, with their lone highways suddenly swarming with the attack vehicles of the Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah in hypermanic pursuit of "the juice" and innocent victims? Multiply those DIY swarms by 100s of thousands, rig them with cheap explosives that can be triggered with garage door openers and set them loose in the cities of the world--and you have what Mike Davis calls the "poor man's (sic) air force," the car bomb.
had to cut rest of reviw due to length limit
--a great book!

[Wils Cain · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at the history of the car bomb starting with its first use on Wall Street with horse and carriage to current day almost daily use. An interesting perspective of how the underdog or "poor man" uses it as a weapon due to its ease of use and low cost. I enjoy non-fiction but prefer non-fiction to unravel in more of a story format rather than presentation of fact after fact. Having said that, still an interesting collection of information to learn how the car bomb became what it is today.

[Erok · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit different than I thought, despite how accurate the title is. It is exactly that, brief history. In a way, that didn't make it much of a page turner, due to the fact that it read like a history book, in that textbook kind of way. He did make an attempt to make it interesting with great antecdotes and a timeline of significant car bombs leading up to the "car bomb (with wings)" of 9-11. I guess I was expecting a bit more analysis in that Mike Davis sort of way, but still recommended.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title refers to the frist "car bomb"--a horse drawn wagon loaded with explosives set off by an anarchist on Wall Street, killing forty.
From here, Davis travels the world wherever car bombs have been employed: Algeria, Lebanon, Vietnam, and on. A weapon of the oppressed, supposedly for terror, davis seems to argue that the "poor man's air force" should be considered a natural reaction to government's oppression and violence. After all, when the government uses violence, it is always justified, but any violence against them or employed by others is never justified.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Buda's wagon truly has become the hot rod of the apocalypse'.

I now suspect Mike Davis wrote the whole book simply to be able to end it on that snappy quote. It rather does some up the progression of the humble car bomb through history.

It wasn't an easy read; either in subject matter or style. It was all plastic explosive facts and body counts in part. The lists of death tolls throughout the current conflicts were particularly alarming but overall an interesting read into the development and progression of this modern weapon with ancient roots.