The Infernal Machine: A True Story Of Dynamite, Terror, And The Rise Of The Modern Detective , Johnson - B

          Anarchy as a 19th century political concept was the principle that no rulers, or ruling class, were necessary in an equitable society.  Anarchists believed people should work in small cooperative efforts, similar to the guild system that dominated Germany for centuries, without industrial sized, top down structures. The discovery of dynamite gave the anarchists the tool they needed to smash the state. The state response to anarchy was the birth of forensic science, and the fight to end the epidemic of violence. 

         Prior to 1866, when Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, all man made explosions were initiated by gunpowder. Nobel harnessed the raw power of nitroglycerin in a stable compound with porous silicate and called it Nobel's Safety Powder. The world called it dynamite. Its primary use was in blasting for construction projects. "Almost all of the iconic engineering triumphs of the period - the London Underground, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Canal - relied extensively on the new explosive." 

          Innumerable attempts, including a few close calls, were made on the life of Alexander II. A dynamite attack at the Winter Palace killed dozens of staff, but not the czar.  The New York Times referred to the assassins as "nihilists," and they finally succeeded in killing the czar in March, 1881. They used nitroglycerin.  This led to an international explosion of nitro and dynamite usage against establishment figures around the world. Dynamite was more stable than nitro and thus, more popular.

         Two Russian Jews left the Pale of Settlement , emigrated to New York and became partners in anarchy, fast friends and occasional lovers. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman wished to take action in America, and chose Henry Frick of Carnegie Steel as their target. With financing help from Goldman, Beckman went to Pittsburgh and twice shot the executive in his office. Frick lived, and Berkman went to prison.

         In Europe, anarchists struck so frequently with bombs and guns that European countries met to discuss and coordinate their actions and eventually create Interpol.  In Paris, Alexandre Bertillon was pioneering methods to identify criminals. He took photographs, measured various body parts, and cross-cataloged everything in such a way that an arrest in France could be researched in the records and the criminal  identified. 

         In September of 1901 in Buffalo, NY, an American born anarchist shot President McKinley twice. He died eight days later. An immediate nationwide search for Goldman, who the assassin said inspired him, began. Goldman was arrested in Chicago, but was soon released as she had no connection to the crime. The new president encouraged, and a year later Congress approved, an Anarchist Exclusion Act. A few years later, the NYPD began a primitive fingerprinting section under the direction of Joseph Fleurot. A new Detective Bureau soon followed. Fleurot successfully put a man in jail based exclusively on his fingerprints. The new scientific approach to fighting crime drew national attention, and was part of the background to the development of the Bureau of Information's card cataloging system. 

       The 1914 Ludlow massacre that caused the death of eleven children at the hands of the Rockefeller's drove the anarchists into a frenzy of activity. They tried to block access to Pocantico Hills, but were arrested by the local police. As the outrage in the anarchist community grew, the NYPD created a Bomb and Anarchist squad and began to dramatically increase its understanding of the manufacture of the infernal machines. More and more attempts were made to bomb buildings in NYC.  The police were able to stop an attempt at St. Patrick's Cathedral at the last minute, but failed to prevent a bombing of their own building on Centre Street. The outbreak of WWI led to increased bombings by the anarchists, and the largest explosion in NYC prior to September 11th occurred at a depot in NY harbor and was set by German saboteurs.

        "On June 14, 1917, Congress passed The Espionage Act, perhaps the most sweeping implementation of state-mandated patriotism ever produced by the United States government." Because of their well-known opposition to the war and the draft, Goldman and Berkman were arrested the day the law passed, tried, and convicted after a jury deliberated for 39 minutes. In the spring of 1919, a NYC postal inspector identified dozens of bombs mailed to important people around the country and was able to safely remove them. One, however, exploded at the door of the home of the US Attorney General. The DOJ created a Radical Division, and put a young J. Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover led the charge to deport Goldman and Berkman, and was at Ellis island on  December 21, 1919, when the two anarchists were among 249 people sent back to Russia. The two were so disillusioned that they left Russia two years later. With the exception of a speaking tour to the US in the 1930's when Goldman was allowed to return, they both spent the rest of their lives in exile in Europe.

          One last big explosion on Wall Street in 1920 was the  end of the movement in the US. "The guild system did not prosper as a blueprint for social organization in the twentieth century. But terrorism did." This is an intriguing book with a significant amount of interesting information. I believe it misses being really good because it lacks consistency.