According to the book description
of Burn, Bomb, Destroy: The
German Sabotage Campaign in North
America, 1914–1917, "Many
believe that World War I was only
fought "over there," as the popular
1917 song goes, in the trenches and
muddy battlefields of Northern France
and Belgium—they are wrong. There was
a secret war fought in America; on
remote railway bridges and waterways
linking the United States and Canada;
aboard burning and exploding ships in
the Atlantic Ocean; in the smoldering
ruins of America's bombed and
burned-out factories, munitions
plants, and railway centers; and waged
in carefully disguised clandestine
workshops where improvised explosive
devices and deadly toxins were
designed and manufactured. It was
irregular warfare on a scale that
caught the United States woefully
unprepared. This is the true story of
German secret agents engaged in a
campaign of subversion and terror on
the American homeland before and
during World War I."
According to the book description
of The Bombs, Bombers and
Bombings of Los Angeles, "In
the crime annals of Southern
California, little mention is made of
the many bombs, bombers and bombings
that have plagued the region since the
turn of the Twentieth Century. There
have been airplane bombings, car
bombs, boat bombings, suicide bombers,
terrorist and lunatic bombers –
absolutely no shortage of bombs. That
they occurred in the Los Angeles
metropolitan area long before the
words ‘Al Qaeda’ or ‘ISIS’ were ever
spoken, is mostly forgotten. The
author reviewed police, fire, court
and coroner’s archives, noting a
somewhat one-dimensional and
impersonal look at many of these
cases. But it was the interviews of
the bombers, their victims, the bomb
detectives and bomb technicians alike,
that revealed a more in-depth and
fascinating look at these events."
According to the book description of
The A Bombing in the
Wilshire-Pico District, "
campaign of terrorist and anarchist
bombings gripped the United States
throughout the first two decades of
the Twentieth Century. There were
hundreds of bombings committed by
extremist elements within the American
labor movement, Italian anarchists,
Sicilian mobsters, German saboteurs,
‘Red” agitators, street thugs and
lunatics, all with an axe to grind and
a willingness to advance their
terrorist causes.
Amidst this chaos, a nascent group of
amateurs embarked on their own
city-wide campaign of terror –
committing murder and sabotage,
assaulting, threatening and
blackmailing witnesses, setting fire
to a church and a private home before
blowing up the home of a prominent Los
Angeles attorney.
What follows is a 1919 Los Angeles
story. It is the story of a shrewd and
conniving woman with a seemingly
powerful ‘little black book’ who would
stop at nothing to steal her murdered
husbands real estate empire, a woman
who set out to avenge the loss of that
fortune and the story of her fawning
gentlemen suitors, all willing to do
anything for her, to include
committing murder. It is also the
story of the lawmen who exposed this
brazen conspiracy of murder, arson and
bombing.
|