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 history, Mike Davis traces its world-wide 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.
