Bombings a century ago

[Cida]

Great article in the NYT magazine section, excerpted from Steven Johnson's book, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective.

If you think NYC violence is worrisome now, imagine living here with the constant danger of bombing.


When Dynamite Turned Terrorism Into an Everyday Threat
In early 20th-century America, political bombings became a constant menace — but then helped give rise to law enforcement as we know it.
Eagan spent a quarter-century on the force, until his death in 1920; over that period, he was called on to either dismantle or survey the wreckage from something on the order of 7,000 bombs, or “infernal machines,” as the press came to call them.
The political bombers were a diverse bunch: socialist agitators, Russian nihilists, Irish republicans, German saboteurs. But of all the bomb throwers of the period, no group was more closely associated with the infernal machines than the anarchists — to such a degree that the press began to call them the Dynamite Club.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/m...forcement.html

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/b...teven-johnson/