City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Los Angeles as one rarely gets to see it - the history, the politics, the architecture. It is the story of Los Angeles with an acute eye for the absurd, the unjust, and even the dangerous.

A quintessential text of the New Western History and the most important work on Los Angeles in the latter half of the twentieth century. ( )

Los Angeles as one rarely gets to see it - the history, the politics, the architecture. It is the story of Los Angeles with an acute eye for the absurd, the unjust, and even the dangerous. ( )

was forced to read this in an English class at Santa Monica College in 2004. The epitome of a biased environmentalist, I was forever scared of the type after reading this and the debacle of how inaccurate it was afterward. the dude was like the Wikipedia of the 90's flat out lying cause he could... ( )

Even Better Than The Original

I recently re-read this updated edition of the classic "City of Quartz" by noted socialist scholar Mike Davis. This text is quickly becoming a classic and belongs alongside the great urban sociological texts such as Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

The history of the development of Los Angeles is really like no other story in America, and indeed the world. And while some may not appreciate the Marxist interpretations and the dialectical method which Davis uses, nevertheless, the depth of intellectual analysis is simply breathtaking. When the original book was written, Davis correctly foreshadowed the Rodney King riots.

Davis pulls no punches in his research. He covers the early railroad and oil speculators, Otis and Harry Chandler, the development of Hollywood, Catholicism in LA, defense industrial production, postwar suburbanization, Kaiser steel, housing covenants, the Watts riots, large Japanese investments of the 80s, and more and more. The book is extremely dense so prepare to spend several weeks, maybe even months to fully absorb the details. Certainly whole books can be written on each of the major topical areas.

Included in this new edition are some fabulous new photos, all by Robert Morrow. The extended prologue in the new edition isn't anything revolutionary, but Davis does update the recent history of Los Angeles.

Obviously, I recommend this book, especially for anyone wanting a deeper intellectual, cultural, and social understanding of the major ideological undercurrents that make up the wonderful city of Los Angeles. ( )