THE INFERNAL MACHINE A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

Author and narrator Steven Johnson earns high praise for this dramatic history of dynamite as a terror weapon, a tangled tale that begins with Alfred Nobel and ends with J. Edgar Hoover. Cause and effect shape a narrative as compelling as any thriller. Dynamite enabled the large constructions of the modern age but offered a powerful tool for anarchists, whose outrages, in turn, spurred the advancement of modern crime detection techniques. Johnson, who can roll a "Czolgosz" off his tongue as fluently as a "McKinley," centers his history on the radicals Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, her sometime lover. Their story, expertly constructed and narrated, embraces a wide slice of a crucial period in American history. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2024]