The “Preface” begins dramatically with the details of the types of bombs that caused the disturbances in Manhattan: “more inventive ones utilized a kind of hourglass device releasing sulfuric acid into a piece of cork, the timing determined by chemistry, not mechanics: how long the acid took to eat its way through the cork, until it began dripping onto the blasting cap below.” Such researched details are unusual in combination with dramatic action in mainstream non-fiction, so this is a good start. Then, Johnson defines the term “anarchist” and the movement that used this term, using uniquely insightful political theory.
However, then the narrative turns to a puffery of investigative procedures, concluding that before the CIA and FBI, the NYPD created a method that stopped this “anarchist” movement by solving whodunnit regarding the bombings. There are enormous numbers of bombs that are annually exploded across the US today, and the only difference is that all those who operate such attacks are no longer joined together under the umbrella of “anarchist”, as they were at this period, since Johnson explains that this term covered Russians, Italians, communists, far-righters etc., or pretty much all outsiders. It is also a puffery to suggest the NYPD was corrupt in or before 1914, and is no longer so, as this institution has remained equally corrupt across its history, and rather if it is described as corrupt or not in the press that has changed across this past century. The ridicule of police in the press has been censored, so that when cases of police corruption surface these are now presented as outliers. The US is not less corrupt than countries that are described as extremely corrupt in the media, the media in those other countries are simply freer to describe corruption when they see it. Most of the remainder of this “Preface” is thus a puffery, which celebrates the “Identification Bureau”, which merely contained “file cabinets containing tens of thousands of photographs and fingerprints”, or the bare minimum necessary to attempt a criminal investigation in an enormous city such as New York.
Then, “Chapter 1: The Controlled Exposition” takes the narrative back to 1866 in Germany, which oddly begins with a detailed description of the “living organisms” that died millions of years earlier to create a dune’s sand, just to situate this period as being about the time of “Darwin’s” evolutionary theories; as I explain in my new series, and other scholars have recently noticed, “Darwin” plagiarized an earlier French scientist’s evolution research from a hundred years before that time, so using Darwin as a time-setter is simplistic and irrelevant. Then, the more relevant science of “nitroglycerine detonations” by “Nobel” is described. But this is a complete digression from the subject puffed in the “Preface” or the promise that this book would show evidence of genius detective-work at the NYPD. There are 3 parts in this book, and only the third part is about the investigation itself.
“Part Three: Detonation: 1914-1919” would in theory begin with evidence of what the police did successfully, but it instead begins with the allocation of funds to start a new police wing, which happened because operators in the department were able to cluster unrelated incidents as the work of “anarchists”, thus convincing city-leaders that this was a coherent threat that required money. When there are details, they report various “radical” incidents and publications, such as Howard Zinn’s “master’s thesis” about the Ludlow massacred, followed by Woody Guthrie’s ballad, “Ludlow massacre.” The next chapter describes protests. There are many digressions with descriptions of irrelevant items such as clothing: “Alexander Berkman strode confidently out of the Tarrytown train station, a cane in one hand, dressed in a crisp dark suit, with a white tie and pocket square.” Without citations, these clothing details can be entirely fictitious, as, for example, there is no way of looking into Berkman’s mind to check if he indeed felt “confident”. Then “Chapter 20: The Blast” begins again irrelevantly with a sunrise in the “summer heat”, before an explosion at 9:06am. Then, finally, there is a relevant description of the damage from this bomb. Then, there is another interesting narrative that explains that back in May through June “someone had begun quietly but persistently removing sticks of dynamite from the construction site.” This is the first sign of investigative research into the central promised subject of this book, but there is no explanation regarding which detective learned of this detail. The next paragraph clarifies: “Much mystery remains about the exact manner of the theft. Was there an inside man on the IRT payroll who was fencing the dynamite on the side?...” In other words, somebody at this construction site reported these thefts to the police and that’s how this case was solved. But the police failed to ask basic whodunnit questions like the one mentioned that could have in fact detected what led to this bombing. This proves that despite added funds to the police department, no improvement in actual detection was generated, or that the puffery of the NYPD in the preface is undeserved.
If somebody is searching for a mystery semi-fiction to read under the hot summer sun, this might be an enjoyable read, but for those who want to understand how budgets of police departments have grown without any progress in policing… you have to read between the lines of this propagandistic support of incorruptible policing.

You could summarize The Infernal Machine in just a few words - "Librarians defeat terrorists" - but its scope is vast: the invention of dynamite, the origins of Anarchism and its American manifestation, the modernization of policing, and the creation of the FBI and the surveillance state. Through selection of interesting episodes involving colorful characters (e.g. Emma Goldman, NYPD reformers), Steven Johnson demonstrates that he is in the ranks of historical storytellers such as Erik Larson and Candice Millard who entertain while presenting lesser-know histories to general readers.

I know that I ate this book up, but I'm hoping that the major book reviews will assign this title to historians for review; I suspect some may have major disagreements (I'm not knowledgeable enough to have them) regarding facts and/or emphasis. Because the story is vast, but its length is moderate, the author has inevitably left much out leaving me with many questions. But to its credit this title has certainly whetted my appetite to read more on this subject, including American Anarchy by Michael Willrich and American Midnight by Adam Hochschild.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Crown Publishing for an advanced copy of this book that looks at dynamite, anarchists, the rise of the police state, and the wealth gap, and much more.

Governments love control. Governments love to control who comes in, who gets out, and what they might be bringing in with them, especially when it comes to knowledge or ideas. In my time I have seem a lot of rights that once seemed pretty inalienable, fade away, and more and more of our privacy and our right to be who were are become something that we should be willing to give up for control. Control equals safety. We can keep you safe, but we need your fingerprints, a document to show who you are, and what you might be doing. Outsiders want to steal our freedom, but we seem pretty good at doing this ourselves. Many of the arguments one hears about outsiders, and how the cops are handcuffed by rules bad guys don't have to follow appeared at a time of strive in America. People were raging about just and unjust wars, wealth disparity, violence in the streets, the growth of a police state and worker's rights. Proving that history has a habit of repeating, as I am discussing America over 100 years ago, when anarchists were screaming for the death of the business class and the rights of people, and dynamite had become the great equalizer in the battle between the powerful and powerless. Writer Steven Johnson looks at these times, their origins, and the changes in policing that came from it in his book, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective.

The book begins with a look at the humble origins of both Alfred Nobel and his troubled invention dynamite. Nobel thought the best of dynamite, seeing something that could help make mines, allow construction of dams and tunnels, all by blowing things up. What Nobel did not consider was the risk to people in using an unstable explosive like dynamite either accidentally, or as became clearer the risk to people on purpose. Dynamite, as made the weak suddenly powerful, and the powerful could be blown into pieces. The book travels to Russia where the first suicide bomber kills Tsar Alexander II changing history in many ways. Johnson looks at the rise of anarchist movement, with two people who left Russia after the killing of the Tsar, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and spread their new ideas to America. In Berkman's case he might have done more. Johnson also looks at the changes in policing in America, especially in New York City where the police were largely corrupt, and incompetent. Bombs especially in the years before World War I were used by anarchists, and crime members, forcing the police to adopt new methods and new thinking to combat this explosive combination.

I have long been a fan of Steven Johnson starting with The Ghost Map, which was one of my favorite books, and one I recommend a lot to customers. I think The Infernal Machine is even better. There is so much in his book, history, philosophy, a love story among anarchists, and a lot of information that I never knew. Johnson covers the rise of the anarchist movement, the history of dynamite, labor relations, even the discovery of fingerprinting along with a different look at J. Edgar Hoover, as nerdy librarian. The book never drags, has many cliffhanger moments, and though there are a lot of characters never gets lost or bogged down. I can't imagine the amount of research Johnson had to do, but it was worth it for such an excellent and interesting book.

Recommended for fans of history, police history, New York history. There is a lot in this book to like. If one likes to learn new things while reading, or just have fun reading, this is without a doubt the perfect read. I can't wait to share this with people.

This book is anarchy. No wait, this book is an octopus. Actually, it's both.

The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson accomplishes something no other book before it has done. That is to describe the ideology of anarchy in a way that makes sense to me. As for the octopus part, Johnson weaves so many story lines together that it will make your head spin. Off the top of my head, he explains the aforementioned anarchist movement, the evolution of the U.S. detective, J. Edgar Hoover, dynamite, and the beginnings of a police state. This book is part history, true crime, and even thriller. How can Johnson balance all these topics without it feeling like a disjointed mess? I don't know, but he did it.

The major through-line of the story are the anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. I certainly wouldn't call them the heroes of the story as they are, at best, hypocrites and, at worst, psychopaths. It depends how comfortable you are with blowing people up. Regardless, their characters are not the point. Their belief system, anarchy, is. Johnson masterfully paints a picture of a movement that has some interesting ideas even if they are never fully understood, implemented, or even agreed upon by its adherents. Goldman and Berkman lay at the center of all the tentacles of the octopus even when they are not actively taking part. It makes for a story which covers a lot of ground while being extremely compact and engaging on every page.

In short, this will be on a lot of people's "best of 2024" lists (including mine!).

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Crown Publishing.)