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book _City of Quartz : Excavating the Future in Los Angeles_

Reviews

Mike Davis peers into a looking glass to divine the future of Los Angeles, and what he sees is not encouraging: a city--or better, a concatenation of competing city states--torn by racial enmity, economic disparity, and social anomie. Looking backward, Davis suggests that Los Angeles has always been contested ground. In the 1840s, he writes, a combination of drought and industrial
stock raising led to the destruction of small-scale Spanish farming in the region. In the 1910s, Los Angeles was the scene of a bitter conflict between management and industrial workers, so bitter that the publisher of the Los Angeles Times retreated to a heavily fortified home he called "The Bivouac." And in 1992, much of the city fell before flames and riot in a scenario Davis describes as thus: "Gangs are multiplying at a terrifying rate, cops are becoming more arrogant and trigger-happy, and a whole generation is being shunted toward some impossible Armageddon."
Davis's voice-in-a-whirlwind approach to the past, present, and future of Los Angeles is alarming and arresting, and his book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary affairs.
--Gregory MacNamee

Sara Frankel, The San Francisco Examiner
"An eye-opening account of the economic, political, intellectual and architectural development of 20th-century Los Angeles, City of Quartz is a deeply troubling look at a city beset by environmental time bombs, vast inequities of wealth and chronic, increasingly brutal racial violence...The city that takes shape in this elegantly argued book seems to be swiftly heading  toward some Armageddon...Few books shed as much light on their subjects as this opionated and original excavation of Los Angeles from the mythical debris of its past and future."

Book Description
The hidden story of L.A. Mike davis shows us where the city's money comes form and who controls it while also exposing the brutal ongoing struggle between L.A.'s haves and have-nots.

Synopsis
A work of social criticism shows how Los Angeles's history, hidden power structure, and disparity of wealth will effect the city's future and the future of urban America in general. Reprint.

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