Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb Paperback – September 17, 2008

The title is catchy. Davis' prose is lively and pithy. This bookhowever, does not measure up to his earlier works such as "Prisonersof the American Dream". I think the problem is with the subjectitself. All Davis' discussion to the contrary, a car bomb is arelatively unsophisticated device. One bomber does not have much tolearn from another: some fertilizer, fuel oil, a detonator and astolen car and one has a poor-man's air-force. Thus, it is difficult tocover the history of a car bomb from a purely technicalperspective. Like one could do with other weaponry: fighter planes orassault rifles. The physical effect of a car bomb is pretty similar sothere is little to describe: a loud bang, smoke, flying debris andbody parts, mangled and bloodied people wringing in agony. Davis triesto be discreet in his explosion descriptions, yet it gets repetitiveby the end of the book.So carbombing is a ruthless and indiscriminate tactic employed byguerrillas of all stripes. The most fascinating aspect of the carbombsis social. Why does a certain group or a movement chose to usecarbombing? What were the social ramifications? And this is whereDavis falls short. The format of the book does not allow him todescribe in detail each individual guerilla movement. Instead, hetries to quickly and impartially describe the movement and proceed tothe bombing itself. The effect, however, is that he lumps together thetruly progressive independence movements, the cults like SenderoLuminoso and everything in between. He does, however, cite good booksthat cover each individual conflicts in sufficient enough detail toexplain the causes, the reasons and the dynamic of the struggle ineach individual case: "The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990" by MarilynB. Young, "A Secret History of the IRA" by Ed Moloney, or "Pity theNation: The Abduction of Lebanon" by Robert Fisk. The facts about theconflicts that I am not familiar with such as the details about theStern Gang in pre-Israel Palestine and Arab reprisals are quiteinteresting. The coverage of the ongoing conflict in Iraq is naturallyincomplete and feels truncated.

"Some people have battleships; other people have car bombs. It kind of evens out."-heard on the street, Beirut, 1983The car bomb today functions as one of the most effectiveweapons which our enemies have in the "War on Terrorism".It figures that the car bomb was invented in America.If you can get past the disgusting descriptions of theeffects of a car bomb on civilians, this is a fascinatinglook at the evolution of a weapon and the shifting waysin which it impacts military operations and politicalattitudes.The most disturbing thing about this book is the storyof how difficult it was for the City of London to haltthe IRA car bombings: The disruption caused by the threatof car bombs was perhaps greater than the damage caused bythe actual explosions. To this day, the entire financialdistrict is a secure area, with inspections at the(limited number of) entrances.My conclusion from reading this book is that we are notgoing to see the end of car bombs any time soon.

Excellent look into the little-covered-as-a-specific-topic world of car bombings. Lots of insight into the "who" and "why" and "how" (not building the bomb, but how they pulled off such escapades)

Haven’t finished it yet but will soon great book so far! Good read for anyone getting into the explosives field!

Davis provides a great insight into the history of the car bomb, so much so that this book leaves me feeling terrified as I read through it.

Throughly enjoyed the detail and the commentary on the utilization if the Car Bomb and the implications it has for future generations

"Any history of technology risks self absorption and exaggeration," writes Mike Davis. It is a good reminder, as books about the history of gunpowder or computers or telegraphy roll out. Davis's new book avoids those risks; _Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb_ (Verso) is a frightening book about a threat that needs no exaggeration to inspire fear. Davis has written scary books before, about slums and about Victorian holocausts, books with irony and grim humor that are not present in his new work. Car bombs, the "poor man's air force", are too loud and sad for such treatment. From their first use by anarchists, they have spread like viruses to all the battlefields of the world, and to the domestic areas where battles are not to be waged. In Davis's history, links are made between such disparate forces using car bombs as the CIA, the IRA, Tamil Tigers, and a host of "liberation" forces with Arabic names, and some of the chapters are mind-numbing with accounts of violence, attack and counterattack, or explanations of increases in technological sophistication while even the basic bicycle bomb is still being deployed with dismaying effectiveness.You probably never heard of the bomber who gives his name to the book. Mario Buda was an anarchist who "with some stolen dynamite, a pile of scrap metal, and an old horse," and a wagon managed to bring terror to Wall Street in 1920. That he was not caught is due to one of the characteristics of car bombs that make them such a successful weapon: they are anonymous and leave little forensic evidence. Davis lists other advantages of car bombs. They can be of huge destructive force, and bombmakers are improving their power all the time. Their consequences cannot be denied or covered up by the governments who are their victims. They are cheap; bootlegged electronics and $500 of fertilizer will do the trick. They can be assembled by individuals who can find the information on-line or in manuals descended from CIA-sponsored training camps. They can be targeted on one particular site, but they can be counted upon to wreak the sort indiscriminate havoc that will demoralize a society. They can give to a small, marginalized group enormous and dramatic power, promiscuously equalizing the powerful and the weak. In this story there are so many bad guys, sometimes connected in more-or-less formal chains of command, sometimes staging car bomb duels against each other, sometimes adopting tactics of previous car bombers, sometimes just repeating such history independently, that it is often difficult to keep them straight, especially as within the short chapters the scenes shift from Vietnam to Beirut to Latin America to Oklahoma City, and of course to Iraq. The American who seems to have played the biggest role in promoting car bombs was Reagan's CIA Director William Casey, who in reply to disastrous car-bombings in Lebanon promoted response attacks on Hezbollah and schooled Afghanis to do so, with the resultant lessons going on to the future Al Qaeda.Naturally Davis's history winds up with the dismal situation in Iraq, where there is no shortage of willing martyrs, and also, because of the depots left behind by the Baathist regime, no shortage of explosives. There is, however, a shortage of the preferred car to use. "Iraqi insurgents prefer American stolen cars because they tend to be larger, blend in more easily with the convoys of U.S. government and private contractors, and are harder to identify as stolen." There is a solution to any such shortage, however; SUVs stolen in California or Texas were exported to the Middle East to be car bombs. It's this sort of innovation that can be done at a primitive level that is one of the reasons car bombs are so powerful. In a scary and disheartening book, Davis gives little hope for abatement in the ever-increasing use of car bombs. Sensitive equipment that can sniff ammonium nitrate at a distance is years from being invented. Trace sensors placed throughout cities are far too expensive, especially in poor countries. Concrete obstacles and bomb-blast barriers can't be put everywhere, and current car bombs can send damage out over 400 yards. The futility is shown in Baghdad itself, where there are 6,000 checkpoints and 51,000 soldiers and police to staff them, but still car bombs go off every day. The secure Green Zone just sends bombers off to softer targets. Davis has scorn for those "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." There is little escape from his dismal prediction: the car bomb has a brilliant future.

In Buda's Wagon: A brief history of the car bomb, Mike Davis recounts the background of what he calls the "workhorses of urban terrorism".Often the product of fringe militancy or "clandestine state terrorism", Davis shows that the car bomb has a limitless capacity to create and sustain fear.This is, he argues, largely because of its low cost and technological accessibility.He writes, "Vehicle bombs are stealth weapons of surprising power and destructive efficiency."However, as Davis puts it, "Like even the `smartest' of aerial bombs, car bombs are inherently indiscriminate. `Collateral damage' is virtually inevitable."If the logic of an attack is to slaughter innocents and sow panic in the widest circle, to operate a `strategy of tension', or just demoralise a society, car bombs are ideal."But they are equally effective at destroying the moral credibility of a cause and alienating its mass base of support, as both the IRA and the ETA in Spain have independently discovered."Davis steers away from romanticism, keeping tight focus on the indiscriminate violence inflicted upon innocents.Packed with horrific details, the book goes beyond the statistics to portray the human and moral costs of this gruesome political lever.He exposes the role of state intelligence agencies - particularly those of the US, Israel, India, and Pakistan - in globalising urban terrorist techniques.He points out, "Anonymity, in addition, greatly recommends car bombs to those who like to disguise their handiwork, including the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, the Syrian GSD, the Iranian Pasdaran, and the Pakistani ISI - all of whom have caused unspeakable carnage with such devices."The Zionist Stern Gang brought the car bomb to the Middle East. In the 1950s the CIA brought it to Vietnam.It was brought to Algeria by far-right French ex army officers trying to destroy the independence struggle. In each case, the weapon produced blowback when adopted by their enemies.Davis argues at the end of the book, "Since there is little likelihood of socio-economic reforms or concessions to self determination that might lead to the large scale `decommissioning of minds' the car bomb has a brilliant future."Every laser-guided missile falling on an apartment house in southern Beirut or mud-walled compound in Kandahar is a future suicide truck bomb headed for the centre of Tel Aviv or perhaps downtown Los Angeles."

Buda's Wagon - A Brief History of the Car Bomb by Mike Davis, VersoMacArthur fellow Mike Davis has written an absorbing book about the development of what has been called 'the poor man's air force'. Starting with anarchist Mario Buda's horse and cart bombing of J.P. Morgan's building in Wall Street in 1920, Davis leads the reader through the development of increasingly powerful and sophisticated weapons until we get to the use of car bombs in Baghdad today.But the author is not just interested in the technical time-line of car bombs, he also looks at the sociology of car bombs, in particular the way in which car bombs have been increasing used to inflict deliberate civilian casualties, rather than to target specific 'enemy' infrastructure. Davis also charts the rise in suicide car bombings and sets the whole story in a political framework which some people will find uncomfortable.Just one caveat. Don't take this book to read on a plane. Government security personal are notorious for their inability to understand that people might want to study activities of which they disapprove in order to understand motivation!Recommended.

a very good read alongside the DVD which is a 'must see'

Item exactly as described and delivered very promptly

This book had a lot of promise: an interesting and relevant topic, a strong introduction and an engaging writing style.About 1/4 into the book, however, the wheels start to come off. Unfortunately, Mike Davis falls into the same trap that catches a lot of academics/writers of a certain political bent; namely, an irresistible urge to slag off the United States, and to a lesser extent, Israel.In some passages, rather than sticking to the topic of car bombs, Davis generously expands his definition to write disapprovingly of suitcase bombs "transported by car" [and then delivered by hand] by Jewish guerrillas. Israel actions are given the terrorist label and in one case, a bombing which resulted in one death was deemed a "massacre". PLO antics, however, escaped such charged language.All of the pertinent 2007 left-wing talking poitns are touched one: the CIA funded/trained foreign jihadis to fight against the Soviets [which is false; they only trained domestic Afghan muhahideen; the ISI and Saudis trained the foreign jihadists), Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam Hussein, Bill Casey was wildly unstable, etc...All in all, it would have been a good book if not for all the unnecessary political spleen-venting and borderline paranoid conspiracy theory peddling.