Buda's Wagon

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 provocative history, Mike Davis tra...