LB's Reviews > The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

I really enjoyed The Ghost Map, so I was excited to see that Johnson had another book coming out. The description sounded exciting, and catered to my mutual interests in history and true crime.

But ultimately I think the author bit off more than he could comfortably digest within the scope of one book. It felt very scattershot, with some topics mentioned only very briefly and tangentially, many characters coming and going, and a through-line that felt too weak to hold it all together.

At it's core it is essentially the story of the American anarchist movement, focused around Emma Goldman and her associates. But under that umbrella we also get (to name just a few threads):

-A history of Russian anarchism
-The development of dynamite by Alfred Nobel
-The American labor movement and union busting
-The New York Italian mob
-The structure of the NYPD and its special divisions
-The emergence of the bomb squad
-The history of fingerprint science and its adoption in America
-J. Edgar Hoover's information filing system

And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. Some of these were really interesting in their own right, but all together it's just too much to try and force into one cohesive narrative. Instead it feels like a jumbled hodgepodge with some interesting anecdotes but an ultimately confusing thesis.

Overall it was still an enjoyable listen though and I did learn quite a few things (I can't believe that so many American terrorist attacks seem to have been largely forgotten in the public consciousness, in an age where we're so hyper focused on terrorism). The author narrates the audiobook version himself and he did a great job, so I would recommend that format.