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Digital Audiobook
Buda's Wagon by Mike Davis

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Buda's Wagon

Publisher
Tantor Media, Inc
Publish Date
31 March 2026
Run Time
7 hours 24 minutes
Format
Audiobook
$13.95

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What to expect

The brilliant and disturbing 100-year history of modern terrorism and car bombs—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 York's Wall Street, killing forty 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 provocative history, Mike Davis traces the 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.

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Details

Author
Mike Davis
Narrator
Sean Runnette
Duration
7 hours 24 minutes
Release Date
31 March 2026
ISBN
9798331900625
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Tantor Media, Inc
Genre
Urban communities, Society and culture: general

Synopsis

The brilliant and disturbing 100-year history of modern terrorism and car bombs—the ubiquitous weapon of urban mass destructionOn 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 forty 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 provocative history, Mike Davis traces the 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.

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