City of Quartz

Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology, Urban, History, Americas, United States
Cover of the book City of Quartz by Mike Davis, Verso Books
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Author: Mike Davis ISBN: 9781844674862
Publisher: Verso Books Publication: September 17, 2006
Imprint: Verso Language: English
Author: Mike Davis
ISBN: 9781844674862
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication: September 17, 2006
Imprint: Verso
Language: English

A fiercely elegant and wide-ranging history of L.A.’s Dickensian extremes and Pynchonesque conspiracies

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, “Los Angeles brings it all together.” To detractors, L.A. is a sunlit mortuary where “you can rot without feeling it.” To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias. 

In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.’s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel Westa city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A fiercely elegant and wide-ranging history of L.A.’s Dickensian extremes and Pynchonesque conspiracies

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, “Los Angeles brings it all together.” To detractors, L.A. is a sunlit mortuary where “you can rot without feeling it.” To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias. 

In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.’s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel Westa city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity.

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