Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.15 (656 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1844672948 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 228 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-06 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"A Terrifying and Dismal History" according to Rob Hardy. "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 exagge. It's Hard to Ignore A Bomb The feature of Mike Davis' books that I have always liked the most is the way in which he digests and synthesizes scholarly works into his commentary to make his points without bogging the reader down in endless detail. This book however lacks this feature, unfortunately. What Davis has done here instead is survey the principle literat. "A HISTORY AND A WARNING" according to N. M. Smith. Mike Davis writes books that are difficult to read: he takes on subjects nobody else will touch and analyzes them with an unrelenting, scientific eye (see his recent Planet of Slums). The history of car bombing--like the startling rise of urban slums--is not a pleasant thesis. One reviewer on this site stated that car bombing is a "goo
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.. 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
Despite clearly populist sympathies, Davis steers away from romanticism, keeping tight focus on the indiscriminate violence inflicted upon innocents. and Colombia, let alone much political background on, say, the Tamil Tigers' bombing campaign in Sri Lanka. Given the weapon's ubiquity in modern times, a "brief history" scarcely allows room for the numerous theaters of conflict within which the car bomb has evolved, including Northern Ireland, Beirut, Israel, the U.S. Packed with horrific and heartrending details, the book goes beyond the statistics to portray the human and moral costs of thi