Product Description
A riveting exploration of the tensions between nature and the built environment.

The storm is here, crushed dams no longer hold, the savage seas come inland with a hop.—Jacob van Hoddis

As Mike Davis shows, prophecies of urban doom too often come true. Beginning with a trip to New York's Ground Zero, Davis pairs the horror of lower Manhattan's falling skyscrapers with Las Vegas' delirious delight in blowing up its landmark hotels, where environmental terrorism is practiced in the name of urban development. We stop at "German Village," the Utah wasteland where Allied scientists once perfected their plans to destroy Berlin, then move on to Los Angeles, the frontline of a "Second Civil War" that lies waiting to be ignited in cities across the country. The title essay is an autopsy of the metropolis dead on a slab, with reflections on "bomber ecology" and "ghetto geomorphology." The final chapter, with accounts of Montreal and Auckland brought to their knees by ice storms and heat, warns that our urban infrastructures are as little prepared to deal with climate change as with car bombs and hijacked airliners. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Perhaps the best Mike Davis essay collection
"Dead Cities" is a collection of Mike Davis essays, most of them by now belonging to the older range of his work (many are from the early 1990s), but this is nonetheless perhaps the best of the essay collections by Davis in print.

As is usual with Davis, the tone is apocalyptic and yet subtle and well-considered throughout, in that combination of piercing rhetoric and grand imaginings that makes his work so readable and compelling. Also usual is the way in which about the first half or so of the collection consists of considerations, commentaries and concerns regarding Los Angeles and its complicated urban structures, both physical and social. Not all of this is equally interesting to non-Angelenos, and sometimes Davis does go on for too long in too much detail about this or that development project on such-and-so street, but on the other hand it allows Davis an opportunity to show his remarkable grasp of the subtle intricacies of race and class in the United States and their intermixture. Here Davis shows the way in which Marxism-based analysis remains the best tool for understanding specific social formations, whether small-scale or large, without it even being necessary to actually name Marx anywhere. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that is what Davis does.

What is remarkable about this particular book is the last part of it, which contains a few lengthy articles by Mike Davis on natural sciences and ecology. The title of the book, Dead Cities, is derived from an extremely intriguing article he wrote on various fin-de-siècle authors' imaginings of great cities, from London to San Francisco, and the way in which they would decay and be reconquered by nature if the humans in them were suddenly to disappear. To this is added an analysis done by modern scientists describing how they would imagine the process of natural reclaiming would proceed, as well as a comparison with the bombed rubble of London and Berlin during WWII, when there were parts of these cities that truly were as if humankind had abandoned it (directly after WWII, predators like wolves formed a serious threat to humans on the road, and famished Berliners grubbed for edible plants). Also of interest is an essay by Davis on the interaction between asteroid impacts and the development of human life on earth, and whether and to what degree our solar system and its bodies form one holistic system with earth.

Although some insipid commentators like Fred Siegel have attempted to portray Davis' musings in this book as being anti-urban or actually wishing for 'Dead Cities', this is manifestly not the case. Davis on the contrary, as is his wont, describes how capitalism unleashed ruins the physical and social life of urban areas, and he has a particular eye for the historical background and sweep of events as they touch the lives of humans, who are now more than ever an urban species. Indeed the apocalyptic in Davis' books sometimes has a rather inexorable character, and this can make him seem a bit too eager to cry doom and gloom, but sometimes when a boy cries wolf the wolf is actually there.

Hard to categorize
This book appears to be Mike Davis' study of the sociological and political downfall of selected cities in the United States, mainly in the West and Southwest. I found it similar in many ways to another of Davis' books, Planet of the Slums, which I also thought of highly.

Awesome sucker punch in the gut!
This a new favorite book of mine. Up there with "1984" or "One With Nineveh". Even scarier than "1984" which amazed me.
Powerful futurism and presentism about evil social engineering, urban ills and urban planning, environmental catastrophy and warfare's effects on modern cites and their total vulnerablity. All TRUE and well researched if a bit scattered. This book even makes efforts to predict what organisms will survive and what the cities will look like in 2500 AD when the catastophies have long come and gone and the people are long gone. Ballsy urban futurism for tough minded readers.
Here's a bit of unflinching text from this book.
"Even if the West Lawn turned into a sand dune or monkeys jabbered in the galleries of Congress, every energy lobbyist -would still decry global warming as science fiction....
Although it may be theoretoiocally possible to imagine `Green' capitalism without rampant fossil fuel dependancy, the actual outcome is dirty environmental counterrevolution. ...Although the academy may still favor the esoteric relativity of postmodern textualism, vulgar economic determinism--which begins and ends with superprofits in the energy sector -currently holds the real seats of power. We don't need Derrida to know which way the wind blows or why the pack ice is melting."
Page415
Only real critism is that it skips around a lot and doesn't finish all its thoughts. The author sometimes rushes past outragous assertions that could be books unto themselves, but here are a half a paragraph or less. However, this almost works in favor of the book making it a peice of modern or post-POST modern art than just a book.

An awesome book that hits like a Drum and Bass song and punches harder than Hemingway

Radical Urbanism
"The ground on which you walk is the tongue with which I talk" -Saul Williams

Mike Davis gives voice to just what the hell we've done to our environment, what's transpiring in the gaps in our relationships with each other, and what goes on underneath the deep and wide footprint of our rampant urban development. Dead Cities is a postmortem excavation of our postmodern urbanscape, a conjugation of all the verbs at work in the human condition.

From the chaos of the "Miamization" of Southern California ghettos and the sprawling ennui of suburbia, to the unfathomable waste of natural resources in Las Angeles and Las Vegas and the groaning discontent of the earth itself, Mike Davis follows every vector that juts out of Main Street, USA. And there's bad news around every corner - especially for the next generation of leaders, planners, and plain old citizens. As he told Mark Dery in an interview for 21C magazine, "Increasingly, the only legal youthful activities involve consumption, which just forces whole areas of normal teenage behavior off into the margins... Irvine, which is the last generation's absolute model utopia of a master-planned community, is producing youth pathologies equivalent to those in the ghettos simply because in the planning of Irvine there was no allotted space for the social relationships of teenagers, nowhere for them lawfully to be - the parks are closed at night, they're not allowed to cruise, and so on. So you get these seemingly random acts of violence." The geography of nowhere is cultivating its very own nihilistic culture -- even in the "perfectly planned" gated communities.

The most commendable thing about Mike Davis and his exhaustively researched books is their propensity toward the margins. Not that he meanders around the subjects about which he writes, rather Davis always includes that extra story that makes the core concepts resonate that much stronger. Whether it's the seven deadly sins of Los Angeles, the dynamical behavior of earth as a closed system, or the plight of the immigrant computer-smashers who moved here "to work in your hi-tech economy," Davis always gets to the core of the issues at hand with his feet firmly on the ground -- and Dead Cities is his most all-encompassing work yet. As he writes at the end of the book, "We don't need Derrida to know which way the wind blows or why the pack ice is disappearing."

The Dead and the Dying
Whether it strictly is or not, Dead Cities feels like the third 'instalment' in Mike Davis' exploration of the nature of the modern and postmodern American city, sitting alongsideEcology of Fear and the superb City of Quartz.Once again, it is his vacillating love/hate relationship with the deserts and metropolises of California in particular, which forms the centre of his work.

Despite the fact that it's Preface would have you believe Dead Cities is a meditation upon post-September 11th urban America; it is rather a collection of essays and articles written during the last decade which each provide a broadly different `take'upon the notion of the dead or dying city. Dead Cities examines the fragility of our urban infrastructures, threatened by man-made or natural factors, providing us with a fractured journey through parts of America in which the apocalypse has already taken place and where the destruction of the twin towers seems an almost inevitable climax.

The scope is vast, ranging from what some may find to be the rather dry economic and statistical data about corrupt town planning in LA; to fascinating and disturbing chapters on the expansion of suburban Las Vegas, and America's secret nuclear weapons testing.Davis also takes in the Compton race riots, extremes of weather in Canada, and there's even a chapter on the bombing of Berlin in WW2.What the spectre of 9/11 adds to this collective is a retrospectively portentous significance; the sense of an interminable social trajectory.

The one drawback of Dead Cities is that it is easy to lose sight of it's central argument. It is not, like Davis' previous works, a narrative which steadily gains momentum, but rather ponderings around a central subject.Whilst this means the strength of a core argument is at times obscured, is also serves as the text's strength, making it easy to dip in and out of.The subject matter in itself almost seems more suited to this layered approach, drawing together a montage of images and ideas, all held in place by Davis's remarkably acute eye for human pathos and contemporary social mores.

It's difficult to define exactly where Mike Davis's work should sit in terms of literary genre, for he is at once a geographer, an economist, a sociologist, a psychologist a journalist and an architectural critic.Where you will find him is under the rather vacuous heading of `urban theorist' which in truth combines all of the above and more. It is however, this diversity which gives his writing its appeal, and it is admirably represented here. ... Read more

Product Description
5 maps, 57 tables

What will California look like by the middle of the twenty-first century? Change is occurring in the state at a breathtaking pace. The state will face many extraordinary challenges. Yet today most Californians believe that their elected officials are unable to develop effective public policies. Mark Baldassare examines the powerful undercurrents--economic, demographic, and political--shaping California at this critical juncture in its history. He focuses on three trends that are profoundly affecting the social and political landscape of the state: political distrust, racial and ethnic change, and regional diversity. Baldassare discusses the complexities of this situation and offers a series of substantive recommendations for how California can come to terms with the unprecedented challenges it faces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great for understanding the future of California
This is a very well written book, with a survey of over 10,000 people that he has intereviewed snice 1998, so it is timely and appears veryaccurate.

He goes on to talk much about the changing landscape in CA insuch areas as politics; how minorities are changing the face of CA and thatin the future the Hispanic nationality will be the major group in CA.

He also talks specifically about the state as a whole and the variousways that people have tried to divide up CA.I have been born and raisedin the Northern part of this state and agree 100% with what he states, thatthe state could be divided right around the San Luis Obisop/Fresno Countyline with a North California and a South California because the two areasare so different. ... Read more

Product Description
Murder in New York City dramatically expands what we know about urban homicide, and challenges some of the things we think we know. Eric Monkkonen's unprecedented investigation covers two centuries of murder in America's biggest city, combining newly assembled statistical evidence with many other documentary sources to tease out the story behind the figures.

As we generally believe, the last part of the twentieth century was unusually violent, but there have been other high-violence eras as well: the late 1920s and the mid-nineteenth century, the latter because the absence of high-quality weapons and ammunition makes that era's stabbings and beatings seem almost more vicious. Monkkonen's long view allows us to look back to a time when guns were rarer, when poverty was more widespread, and when racial discrimination was more intense, and to ask what difference these things made. With many vivid case studies for illustration, he examines the crucial factors in killing through the years: the weapons of choice, the sex and age of offenders and victims, the circumstances and settings in which homicide tends to occur, and the race and ethnicity of murderers and their victims.

In a final chapter, Monkkonen looks to the international context and shows that New York-and, by extension, the United States-has had consistently higher violence levels than London and Liverpool. No single factor, he says, shapes this excessive violence, but exploring the variables of age, ethnicity, weapons, and demography over the long term can lead to hope of changing old patterns. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent history of homicide in NYC
One of the country's leading quantitative historians examines the patterns of homicide in NYC since the late 1700s.The story is a complex one, and the patterns are far from obvious.This sort of careful work on violence in early America contrasts sharply with popular, but largely false, history books on similar topics, such as Arming America by Michael Bellesiles.This is a serious work of quantitative history, not riveting to read, but well written nonetheless.The historical research is unmatched. ... Read more

Product Description
The surprising truth about women and intermarriage in 19th-Century California

Until recently, most studies of the colonial period of the American West have focused on the activities and agency of men. Now, historian María Raquél Casas examines the role of Spanish-Mexican women in the development of California. She finds that, far from being pawns in a male-dominated society, Californianas of all classes were often active and determined creators of their own destinies, finding ways to choose their mates, to leave unsatisfactory marriages, and to maintain themselves economically.

Using a wide range of sources in English and Spanish, Casas unveils a picture of women's lives in these critical decades of California's history. She shows how many Spanish-Mexican women negotiated the precarious boundaries of gender and race to choose Euro-American husbands, and what this intermarriage meant to the individuals involved and to the larger multiracial society evolving from California's rich Hispanic and Indian past. Casas's discussion ranges from California's burgeoning economy to the intimacies of private households and ethnically mixed families. Here we discover the actions of real women of all classes as they shaped their own identities.

Married to a Daughter of the Land is a significant and fascinating contribution to the history of women in the American West and to our understanding of the complex role of gender, race, and class in the Borderlands of the Southwest. ... Read more

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A Simon & Schuster eBook ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

THE GREATEST BOOK!!!!
I have often wondered how DID my family end up in Miami, (via Brooklyn/Midwest) and this book (as I am unable to rely of oral history from my family)
is the missing link!No bookshelf should be without it...really!

a subtle mix of interesting and boring
Parts of this book were interesting- I especially liked the first couple of chapters, where Moore shows how explosively the Jewish community in Miami and Los Angeles grew, and why these cities were so attractive to American Jews.She also tries to explain why Jewish-black cooperation was so common; in Miami Beach, both were fighting against similar types of housing discrimination, and Jews had no convincing reason to oppose fair housing for blacks while opposing it for themselves. (Although it is not clear why Los Angeles Jews adopted similar political views when they seem to have had far less discrimination to contend with).

But much of the middle of the book settles into the rut of blow-by-blow community history, with an unexciting listing of which rabbi did what in which neighborhood.She generalizes about differences between Sun Belt and Frost Belt Jews without backing up her generalizations, she barely mentions Orthodox Jews, and she barely mentions the evolution of Sunbelt Jewish communities over the past few decades.

On balance I am glad I looked at this book, but am not sure if I really needed to read every page and every chapter. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

A cautionary note
A cautionary note for budding "progressives" trying to understand urban issues:

I read the authors' website on political views that informed this book and can say that this is a book from the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) neighborhood activist perspective rather than a sustainability perspective. The authors assume opposing urban growth in order to further "quality of life" is in and of itself always "progressive."This camp increasingly finds itself at odds with groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, advocates for affordable housing, and indeed the entire modern sustainability movement.At the same time, this camp finds itself increasignly akin to the east coast conservatives who try to limit development in upper-class suburbs.They tend to celebrate small towns and suburbs, which no dobut will appeal to a certain part of the population.

It has been established beyond a doubt that denser developments, supported by walking and public transit, are sustainable.This is realized in cities such as Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR, and of course all of Western Europe, which have increased urban densities in centers and near transit, allowed smaller lot homes to be built throguhout urban areas, practiced balanced growth management, protected open space and farmland, and increased transit, walking and cycling. A key part of the successful approach is that it is regional in nature.

This contrasts to the "neighborhood activism" paradigm the authors advocate, where all intensification of land use is seen as greed by "real estate developers and their buddies" that damages "quality of life;" the only people seen as deserving of land value increases are the owners of (single-family) homes.Hence the author cites opposing downtown development as a "left wing" approach.

Yes, the activist perspective gets a few things right - opposing new highways and protectiong environmentally sensitive lands, for instance - but even in these cases, the concern seems to be about the home values and "quality of life" of a few neghborhoods rather than the sustainability of a community or region.

The reality is that the neighborhood activist paradigm leads to increasing home values for those who bought homes a generation ago (the new "haves,") while damaging the environment by forcing sprawl and commuting by car; and disadvantaging moderate-income folks because workers must then live far away and spend money on transportation.The neighborhood activists may then respond with limited affordable housing programs that fall far short of need.

The neighborhood activist approach is therefore not progressive, and I am not sure what they mean by it being left-wing or Marxist, but I'll leave that to them. The approach is at its heart anti-urban, and reflects the same underpinnings that drove suburban sprawl, auto-dependency, or the anti-urban policies of Ronald Reagan.It finds bedfellows in upper-class suburbs that want to keep out the riff-raff.

In opposition to this, I believe the future of the sustainability movement lies with those striving to create livable cities and regions where many of us would choose to live, work, bike or take transit, and reduce our carbon footprints while celebrating diversity and community.The future of the sustainability movement does not lie with neighborhood activists who hunker down in small, exclusive communities ...
... Read more

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An absorbing look at the role of disease and health policy in the construction of race, gender, and class and in urban development in nineteenth- and twentieth-century San Francisco.

"Craddock’s provocative work offers an invaluable perspective on public health and the construction of race that speaks not only to the past but also to the present." —Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"City of Plagues should fuel excitement and increase other geographers’ notice of the remarkable work emanating from it. It simply and brilliantly traces how the often-argued triad of power/knowledge/space actually works in a particular place, at a particular time, and around a particular issue. Meticulous and nuanced." —Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

"This book provides an engaging, readable, and well-researched account of the social, political, and medical responses to infectious diseases in San Francisco from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. A wealth of material is brought together to describe, in a geographical, historical, and cultural framework, the experience, among San Francisco’s population, of diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, plague, and, latterly, HIV and AIDS." —Environment and Planning A ... Read more

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Studies the cultural, economic, political, and social forces influencing life in New York City. ... Read more

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Moment of Grace tells the story of the American city in its remarkable heyday. Never before or after the 1950s were downtowns so exciting, neighborhoods so settled, or suburban dwellers so optimistic. Urban culture was at its peak: it was vital, urbane, conformist, and generating rebellion all at once. Capturing the mood of the '50s in superb historical photographs and mining delightfully varied sources-including urban critics, interviews with city residents, novels, songs, magazines, and newspapers-Moment of Grace brings alive the downtowns, the neighborhoods, and the suburbs of the era. A rich historical reflection on a singular decade, the book also portrays the '50s as a critical turning point in American culture and economy. Michael Johns shows us exactly why city life never could or would be the same again. Giving a vivid sense of the lived experience of the day, Johns explores the '50s in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, writing about fashion (which demanded the highest heels and pointiest breasts in history), nightlife, architecture, literature, business and economic trends, and teenage culture. He tells us what was for sale in the stores, who lived in the neighborhoods, what life was like for women in the brand-new suburbs, and much more. And he confronts difficult issues head-on. What did the loss of city jobs and the simultaneous success of the civil rights movement mean for black neighborhoods? What were the profound consequences of the rise of the suburbs for family life?In contrast to the vibrant cities of the '50s, the streets of today's downtowns are often empty if not suffused with melancholy. Johns uncovers the seeds of the transformation from the '50s to today, and at the same time, he paints a memorable picture of the American past.Illustrations: 47 b/w photographs ... Read more

Product Description
Within a generation San Francisco grew from an isolated Mexican trading post with more hills than people into America's major Pacific Coast city. Shaped by entrepreneurs, eccentrics, and visionaries, it became renowned for accommodating those who dared to be different.

THE CITY OF LANDMARKS: the Golden Gate Bridge; the Transamerica Pyramid; the Ferry Building; Mission Dolores; City Hall; Coit Tower; Alcatraz Island; Yerba Buena Gardens.

THE CITY OF PSYCHEDELIA: Ken Kesey and the Acid Tests; the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane; the Trips Festival and the Human Be-In; underground culture and festivals.

THE CITY OF WRITERS: Ina Donna Coolbrith, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, George Sterling; Dashiel Hammett; Kenneth Rexroth; Allen Ginsberg; Herb Caen; Armistead Maupin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

an excellentbook
I bought this book in preparation for a trip to San Francisco and it really helped me understand so much about the city, from the Gold Rush right up to the dotcom boom and crash. I especially liked the use of quotes from old sources that illustrate not just the past but the present as well. Overall, the book is very engaging and well written, I'd certainly recommend it for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of San Francisco than mainstream guide books provide.

Not up to par.
I am teaching a class on San Francisco at SF State University in the Spring and really was interested in using this book as my course textbook. I'm really impressed with the content, but, unfortunately, I cannot use it as a text book because 1.) despite extensive factual claims and quotes, the author fails to give citations (there are absolutely no footnotes or endnotes), and 2.) there are a number of grammatical errors, in particular inconsistent punctuation. I can hardly expect my students to write essays using standard citation and correct punctuation if their textbook fails to provide it. Too bad. I would have ordered 65 copies of the book. However, I recommend the book to casual readers, interested in San Francisco history. ... Read more

Product Description
State rail programming and planning have matured greatlyin the past three decades.State and local governments responded towidespread rail line abandonment in the 1970s by attempting topreserve local rail services and corridors through the adoption ofrail freight assistance programs.States also sought to preserveexisting passenger rail services by subscribing to Amtrak’s 403(b)program.This program allows states to negotiate and contract withAmtrak to supplement existing service and build inter-city railservice along vital transportation corridors.

Prosperity in the mid-1980s changed the nature of state rail programs.States ventured into a variety of activities involving freight andpassenger rail programs, grade-crossing safety, right-of-wayacquisition and rail banking, high speed rail planning, and intermodalconnectivity at seaports, river ports, and truck-rail terminals.Moreover, some states appropriated new financing to establish stablefunding sources for the rail mode.The salient features of the 1990shave been the virtual disappearance of federal rail assistance and thetailoring of state rail programs to states’ individual needs.

The purpose of this report is to provide an in-depth look at fourdiverse, yet exemplary, state rail programs: California, Florida,North Carolina, and Washington State.The report examines theevolution, characteristics, management, costs, funding sources andbenefits of each program in detail.It also discusses lessons fromthese state rail programs that might benefit the State of Texas in theevent that Texas considers more active participation in state railprogramming.Detailed appendixes contain considerable documentationof state statutes, funding histories, program descriptions,feasibility studies, Amtrak 403(b) contracts, and similar sourcematerial. ... Read more

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As old as a roadway that was once a Native trail, as new as the suburban subdivisions spreading across the American countryside, the cultural landscape is endlessly changing. The study of cultural landscapes--a far more recent development--has also undergone great changes, ever broadening, deepening, and refining our understanding of the intricate webs of social and ecological spaces that help to define human groups and their activities. Everyday America surveys the widening conceptions and applications of cultural landscape writing in the United States and, in doing so, offers a clear and compelling view of the state of cultural landscape studies today.

These essays--by distinguished journalists, historians, cultural geographers, architects, landscape architects, and planners--constitute a critical evaluation of the field's theoretical assumptions, and of the work of John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the pivotal figure in the emergence of cultural landscape studies. At the same time, they present exemplary studies of twentieth-century landscapes, from the turn-of-the-century American downtown to the corporate campus and the mini-mall. Assessing the field's accomplishments and shortcomings, offering insights into teaching the subject, and charting new directions for its future development, Everyday America is an eloquent statement of the meaning, value, and potential of the close study of human environments as they embody, reflect, and reveal American culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Superlative
This book changed my life and photographic direction.
I'd give it ten stars if I could. Buy it immediately if you want
to understand ordinary landscapes in a new and deeper way.

Jeff Brouws

Look out the window on road trips!!
J. B. Jackson's legacy lives on in geographers, historic preservationists and others, and is alive and well. This book is a great introduction to Jackson's lifelong study of the American landscape, including the modern, vernacular everyday things that many scholars ignore or criticize.

A variety of authors tell Jackson's story, and about how his influence has impacted their lives and careers. A must-read for cultural landscape students, historic preservationists, architectural historians, or anyone who appreciates a good road trip on the roads of the U.S... the ones travelled before the construction of the interstate highway system...

Everyday America / eds. Wilson and Groth
A collection of reflections on how to see, interpret, and appreciate the American cultural landscape. After reading this book the term "the middle of nowhere" will never leave your mouth or enter your thoughts. The front porch of the local house will be as interesting as Time's Square. Read this book and understand your ordinary environment. Not just for cultural geographers, but everyone with eyes or a heart for how we live and organize our spaces and places. ... Read more

Product Description
This new edition of Mike Davis’s visionary work gives an update on Los Angeles as the city hits the 21st century.

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, LA 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 LA'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.

In this new edition, Davis provides a dazzling update on the city's current status.

Customer Reviews (9)

Order Perfect
Book was said to be in 'fair to good' condition: and it is. It's a bit worn, but all good books are. I would definitely buy from this seller again. Thank you.

A provocative (but over-reaching) essay on urban inequality
Several years ago I picked this book up on a business trip to L.A. and couldn't put it down.Since then I've become an armchair aficionado of L.A./Southland history and returned to explore the area as often as I can afford.This book has to be compared to the likes of Heidi and Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave" and so forth.It's part essay, part history, and part futurism.As with the "Third Wave" it's full of breathless pronouncements of WHAT HAS BEEN and WHAT WILL BE--except this is more of a dystopian nightmare.Like it or not, L.A. has been the most important city in America--probably the world--since World War Two.This comes thanks to the advent of TV, which sold the world on "fun in the sun." So, if you want to read one grand pronouncement on the darkest possible outcome of modern urban inequality, this is a good one.Just figure it won't turn out as badly as he predicts.Mike Davis is like a stopped clock of the analog variety.He's going to be right twice a day.But it sure is fun to read him going on about it.

Still Too Valid. Davis Milestone for Urban Studies
An unfortunate classic for urban studies. It might be all too valid... Actually it might be gaining validity as time progresses...

One of the most boring books I've ever read
I caught Mike Davis on an HBO Documentary about gangs in Southern California, and this book was referenced many times.As a resident of Southern California, I was anxious to learn more about the new megalopolis that I now called home.

I anxiously began reading the book, but quickly became disinterested by Mike Davis's relentlessly dry and academic approach in telling the story of Los Angeles.There would be absolutely no mistaking the fact that Mike Davis is an academic, and not a story teller.

The reader is subjected to a million tiny facts about everything that ever happened throughout the history of the city, and by concentrating on every piece of bark on every tree the reader is denied the view of the forrest.It literally felt like this was a book I had to read for some kind of class or homework assignment, and I had to will myself to finish it.I am a voracious reader, but I found this book to be virtually unreadable.

High marks to Mike Davis for the research that must have gone into this book, but low marks for keeping the reader engaged about the material.

Not Really About L.A.......
As an avid fan of Los Angeles/Southland history, and having lived there from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, I was eager to get my hands on this book.Sadly, it isn't truly about Los Angeles.The author uses the city as a soapbox to espouse his political view of the world.Any city would do, to be sure.If you want to read a continuous stream of how the "haves" abuse the "have nots", how "power" is always bad and how the ultimate goal of every "majority" is to subjugate every "minority", then have a good read.Don't expect any factual basis or thoughtful analysis, however.This book is just "That's the way it is, thank you very much, and the place has gone to hell." ... Read more

Product Description
Mean Streets focuses on the streets, parks, schools, and commercial venues of Chicago from the era of the 1919 race riot to the civil rights battles of the 1960s to cast a new light on street gangs and to place youths at the center of the twentieth-century American experience. Andrew J. Diamond breaks new ground by showing that teens and young adults stood at the vanguard of grassroots mobilizations in working-class Chicago, playing key roles in the formation of racial identities as they defended neighborhood boundaries. Drawing from a wide range of sources to capture the experiences of young Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Italians, Poles, and others in the multiracial city, Diamond argues that Chicago youths gained a sense of themselves in opposition to others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Fresh and Fascinating Look
I was skeptical about picking up yet another book on youth gangs and juvenile delinquency, but I was happy to discover that Mean Streets offers an entirely new perspective on these issues. In fact, the book is not at all about kids getting into trouble, but rather how young people played key parts in neighborhood struggles and conflicts that often divided communities along racial and ethnic lines. I was particularly interested in the last two chapters, which show how street gangs became involved in the civil rights and black power movements. Diamond does a great job at capturing how young kids in Chicago's poorest black neighborhoods viewed their role in these movements. But he is no less attentive to explaining what was motivating the working-class white kids who were throwing rocks at these young civil rights protesters. Mean Streets shows us in vivid detail what a battleground Chicago was in the 1960s. I recommend it to anyone interested in understanding how ordinary young people experienced and participated in the historic events of these years.

A fascinating and deeply researched analysis
I couldn't disagree more with the previous review. I found the prose somewhat dense at times, but for the most part clear and convincing. More importantly, this book is based on an enormous body of rich data, and, unlike many historians, the author is not afraid to bring complex theoretical insights to the stories he is revealing. As someone who works on youth issues, I was convinced by the book's pathbreaking move to place youths and street culture at the center of our understanding of racial identity and neighborhood politics. I was also impressed by the author's ability to move from the story of European immigration in the early twentieth century all the way through the era of civil rights and white backlash without losing any precision. I would recommend this book to anyone working on urban politics and culture in the twentieth century.

A Disappointment
I expected much from this book but found the prose turgid and the author never able to deliver on his promises. Unless you're from Chicago and lived through those years when gangs rules the windy city, you wouldn't be able to penetrate the very dense prose and tie the loose ends together. There's no way that one can read this book from start to finish without refraining from flipping ten pages at once. I was able to glean e few things here and there but as an aspiring student of masculinity I was quite disappointed. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Go to the source books instead
The author, Charles F. Adams, credits his sources. But most of the stories found in this book were included in either San Francisco Murders, which was published in 1947 and edited by Joseph Henry Jackson, and Great Crimes of San Francisco, published in 1974 and edited by Dean W. Dickensheet. Adams has added very little to the tales he reiterates from these two books, and the originals were much more well written. There are innumerable typographical errors in this work, including instances in which the murderers' names are spelled in two different ways. Also, a citation to Dickensheet's volume says it was published in 1947 instead of 1974. The above-mentioned books are readily available from online booksellers, and are far more detailed and engaging. Adams' work does have one advantage: it includes some fuzzy half-tone photographs of the murderers and their victims, whereas the earlier works were unillustrated. Read the older books, then use this one, if need be, to look at the pictures.

A lively expose
Murder has a long history in San Francisco; and not just ordinary murder, either. The murders featured in Murder By The Bay: Historic Homicide In And About The City Of San Francisco involve politicians, colorful social figures, and even movie comedians. Chapters cover some of the biggest murders the city has experienced with an eye to exploring how these murders changed city policies and culture. From the Montgomery Street killing of a newspaper editor in 1956 to the trial of Dan White, former city supervisor who killed the mayor in more recent times, Murder By The Bay is a lively expose.

Facinating San Francisco Characters
Adams has done it again! His Murder by the Bay joins Great Rouges of San Francisco and Heros of the Golden Gate to complete his trilogy on colorful San Franisco history. A really good read. ... Read more