9781844672943-frontcover

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

History of the car bomb traces the political development of this influential weapon of terror and resistance.

In this provocative history, Mike Davis traces the car bomb's 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.

Paperback, 228 pages

ISBN: 9781844672943

September 2008

$16.95 / £7.99

Reviews

  • Davis creates a fascinating genealogy that raises chilling questions about the future of terrorism.
  • Mike Davis, long-time chronicler of apocalyptic terror, has done it again: he has made me scared ... The brilliance of Davis's story is undeniable.
  • Mike Davis follows the evolution of the car bomb from the Balkans to Palestine, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Lebanon and, of course, Iraq.
  • Brilliantly terse ... Davis writes with icily suppressed fury.

Blog

Mike Davis: Wall Street through the augmented eyes of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper

Who could have envisioned Occupy Wall Street and its sudden wildflower-like profusion in cities large and small?

John Carpenter could have, and did. Almost a quarter of a century ago (1988), the master of date-night terror (Halloween, The Thing), wrote and directed They Live, depicting the Age of Reagan as a catastrophic alien invasion. In one of the film’s brilliant early scenes, a huge third-world shantytown is reflected across the Hollywood Freeway in the sinister mirror-glass of Bunker Hill’s corporate skyscrapers.

They Live remains Carpenter’s subversive tour de force. Few who’ve seen it could forget his portrayal of billionaire bankers and evil mediacrats and their zombie-distant rule over a pulverized American working class living in tents on a rubble-strewn hillside and begging for jobs. From this negative equality of homelessness and despair, and thanks to the magic dark glasses found by the enigmatic Nada (played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), the proletariat finally achieves interracial unity, sees through the subliminal deceptions of capitalism, and gets angry.

Very angry.

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