The postwar era’s mood of fragile peace, following the second world war, saw a shockwave of destruction from two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that world, George Orwell published an article in a newspaper titled You and the Atom Bomb. In it, the future novelist wrote that while sophisticated weapons amplify power, simple weapons — because their simplicity makes them harder to detect and neutralize — lend claws to the vulnerable. This line serves as a thread running through the book under discussion.
Mike Davis chose that sentence to begin his exploration. Buddha’s Car: A Short History of the Bomb Vehicle traces the genealogy of car bombs, moving from an early act in the 1920s that used a horse-drawn bomb to much more recent embodiments, shaped by time and place. This recent reissue by Verso Libros also doubles as a memorial to the American writer who passed away in 2022. Davis did not fit the mold of a typical sociologist. The scholar José Mansilla, an anthropologist and professor at UAB, is the dedicatee mentioned in his obituary. He describes how Mansilla’s return to research came from a shift toward critical political thinking, and from the impulse to distance militancy, activists, and unionists from reflexive, often violent responses observed during social conflicts. Works like City of Quartz: Archaeology of a Modern Los Angeles, The Planet of Slums, and other projects echo in the background as related inquiries.
In Buddha’s Car: A Short History of the Bomb Car, Davis investigates the origins and spread of these weapons and the role of state intelligence agencies (notably those of the United States, Israel, India, and Pakistan) in the globalization of urban terrorism techniques and their consequences. In many cases, altering strategic defenses among global power centers became necessary, and the attacks often outpaced the defenses that followed. Davis describes car bombs as the “poor man’s air force,” outlining several reasons to justify that label. He argues that these weapons are relentlessly destructive and stealthy, capable of delivering the explosive power of a first‑tier vehicle to a close-range target while remaining hard to track.
Second, he notes that car bombs stand out as a potent propaganda tool because their effects are visible and memorable. They function like manifestos written in blood, a point Regis Debray would recognize. Unlike graffiti or lone assassinations, concealing or denying the impact of a bombing in a city center is exceptionally difficult. Third, car bombs are inexpensive and efficient: the cost of an attack can dwarf the damage caused by much more expensive weapons. The book cites the 1993 World Trade Center plot, where a semi-ton of urea and a rented van caused enormous destruction for a fraction of the price of a modern ballistic missile. In contrast, a single missile shot from a regional power might cost far more. Fourth, planning a car bombing is often straightforward, with improvised instructions and readily available materials circulating online. Fifth, the incidental casualties and panic surrounding such events create a multiplier effect that can turn fear into a strategic objective for terrorists. This secondary impact often alienates civilian populations from their governments. Sixth, car bombs tend to leave few traces, because the perpetrators frequently destroy the evidence during the attack, making tracking difficult. Finally, car bombs rarely depend on a formal political program; they can empower small groups to push a political agenda outside traditional election channels, without needing legal representation or a formal platform.
How the narrative began
Despite possible misreadings of the heading, the creator of Buddhism had nothing to do with these events. Davis points to the first car-bomb attempt as inspired by a wagon bomb that nearly killed Napoleon in Paris in 1800, but the better historical anchor is September 1920, shortly after the arrest of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. To protest the arrests, a comrade named Mario Buda parked a bomb-laden wagon in New York City’s financial district, right as a major factory meeting was underway. The target was an American banker believed to be the loose end behind the arrests, along with other financiers believed to be tied to the same network.
The 1920 attack on Wall Street, at the intersection of Broad Street and the corner of Wall Street, caused extensive damage and led to 40 deaths and around 200 injuries. The area still bore the marks of World War I’s lingering violence. The stock exchange halted trading for the first time in its history due to the disruption. Morgan, who avoided injury while away at a farm in Scotland, was among the injured, as were Junius Morgan and Alvin Krech, president of the Equitable Trust Bank.
In the aftermath, police blamed union members for the violence, while Buda fled to Italy without attracting serious pursuit, later collaborating with the Mussolini regime. The event marked a foundational moment, showing that a single migrant, a few kilograms of explosives, and a rickety horse-drawn wagon could threaten the strongest capitalist system in a dramatic fashion.
1947, a pivotal year
In Davis’s portrayal, the car bomb represents a prototype for later attackers: a device capable of carrying large quantities of explosives covertly and placed in close proximity to a target. In the years following, many other incidents occurred, most of them flawed or unsuccessful. By 1947, the car bomb had come to be recognized as a full‑fledged war weapon. Attacks by groups on the political right and Zionist militias in Palestine began to employ these methods. The first major incident involved a truck bomb driven into an English police station in Haifa, resulting in multiple deaths and many injuries.
Since then, car bombs have been used from Saigon to Oran, from Palermo to Northern Ireland, and even the Basque country. The approach has pervaded conflicts worldwide; the era of thinking about car bombs as a rarity was replaced by their normalization in many theatre of wars. In the late 20th century, groups like ETA in Madrid also carried out lethal car-bomb campaigns. The allure lay in their ability to produce dramatic effect with minimal cost, often shifting the balance of power with astonishing efficiency.
This efficiency, the author argues, makes car bombs attractive to insurgent groups. For instance, a car bomb can deliver the explosive power of a significant airstrike against a close target while costing only a small fraction of that price. The appeal is clear: cheap, devastating, and terrifying—an instrument of public fear that can reshape political landscapes with minimal resources.
The book emphasizes several critical properties. Car bombs can be anonymous and leave few traces, making post-attack investigations difficult. They offer a platform for groups without formal political representation to inject themselves into public discourse. And they demonstrate how accessible, easily assembled devices can fuel large-scale violence, spreading fear across borders and civilizations.
A weapon seemingly unstoppable
Davis cites Pentagon insiders who warned of a possible “fourth-generation” war scenario dominated by a deadly triad: car bombs, mobile communication, and the internet. This triad could enable small units and criminal networks to execute synchronized, global attacks without centralized control. Perpetrators no longer need access to formal structures to achieve mass impact; they can leverage online channels to coordinate and broadcast actions. In some cases, terror groups produce their own propaganda that rivals mainstream productions, blurring lines between violence and charismatic messaging.
In sum, while Buddha’s Car presents a troubling catalog of violence and catastrophe, it also offers a historically rigorous analysis of a form of power that has left an enduring mark on our future. It is a compelling narrative about how a single, familiar device can transform political landscapes and redefine the limits of modern violence with chilling clarity [citation].