THE INFERNAL MACHINE

Combining science, forgotten periods of history, and philosophy, Johnson documents the rise of dynamite-driven political terrorism, the emergence of modern forensic sciences, and the formation of the modern detective in the twentieth century.

When Arthur Woods took command of the New York Police Department in April of 1914, the institution was still largely the corrupt, low-tech organization of the Tammany Hall era. The solving of crimes was largely outside their purview. Woods was determined to change that. Within weeks of his tenure, New York City was engulfed in the most concentrated terrorism campaign in the nation's history: a five-year period of relentless bombings, many of them perpetrated by the anarchist movement led by the legendary radicals Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Steven Johnson's engrossing account of the struggle between the anarchist movement and the emerging surveillance state stretches around the world and back to the nineteenth century - to Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite, to the development of forensic science in France, and to the assassination of Czar Alexander II, an event that propelled Berkman and Goldman's emigration from Russia to America and inspired their conviction that the nation state must be destroyed. As the forces of anarchy and policing clash in New York City, we meet Inspector Joseph Faurot, a science-first detective who works closely with Woods in reforming the police force; Hans Schmidt, the psychotic killer priest whose capture turns Faurot into a household name; and Amadeo Polignani, the young Italian undercover detective who infiltrates the notorious Bresci Circle. Johnson is brilliant at finding new connections between people and places and ideas, but also grounds this epic saga of conflicting historical forces into a great story - as well as drawing connections to the big issues of this very moment. Readers of page-turning history and big ideas will be fascinated. Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of thirteen books, including Enemy of All Mankind, Where Good Ideas Come From, How We Got to Now, The Ghost Map, and Extra Life. He's the host and co-creator of the Emmy-winning PBS/BBC series How We Got to Now, the host of the podcast The TED Interview, and the author of the newsletter Adjacent Possible, and has 1M followers on Twitter.