City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

This book is an outstanding synthesis of architectural and urban studies, political and intellectual history, and good-old marxist polemics. The major lesson to draw from this book is that LIBERALISM IN AMERICA IS OVER. This is exemplified most profoundly in the chapter entitled "The Hammer and The Rock," where Davis makes the case that the LAPD's wars on drugs, gangs, and other things a racist might associate with inner-city youth amount to a neo-colonial occupation of poor (mostly colored) LA. This chapter is also widely credited with anticipating the 1992 uprisings. As to the complaints others have lodged against Davis fact-checking and his general tone: these charges are at best specious and at worst libel. First of all, the book is impeccably documented and annotated, having been originally published by a reputable academic publisher (Verso). Second, his general point of political orientation and critique is unapologetically leftist. Not leftist as most American's (mis)understand the term --- i.e. hopelessly naive, pacificist, "tolerant," and so on --- but leftist in the venerable tradition of Marx and Engels, where it is assumed that there is ultimately no war but class war and never too much to know about the problems with ruling class methods of exploitation under capitalism. This means that Davis compensates for the paucity of justice in the world by injecting his rhetoric with equal helpings of sarcasm, irony, and, above all, humanity. If you prefer books that find the Aristotelian "happy medium" between competing perspectives, this is not a book for you. If, on the other hand, you want to read a prophetic work of history that exemplifies what the application of good scholarship can be, this is your book.

I'd just like to offer a voice of temperance after reading a number of the reviews here. The boogeyman mentions of Davis' "Marxist" leanings are worthy of the McCarthy hearings. The mock citations of the type "All the other books I read in the field are much better" are proof of the reviewers' pretentiousness rather than a comment on the value of Davis' book. And, the ad hominem attacks against Davis are unfortunate and probably fueled by the envy of the young and non-published towards Davis as a productive scholar who doesn't seem like he's going away anytime soon. All of which is to say, forget the negative reviews and give City of Quartz a read. It was an insightful, even shocking, book when I read it years ago and continues to make for a solid supplement to a lived experience and a wide-range of contrasting readings on L.A. (as well as a good antidote against the boosterism and dreamy-eyed tripe that often goes around about our city).

I noticed a phrase used by one of the reviewers above, which prompts me to write. That phrase concerned Davis' alleged ignorance of Orwell's rule concerning the writing of clear prose. In reality, Davis' writing is remarkably clear, and as a matter of fact for some people that counts as a point against Davis. That is, the major debate among university leftists today, especially in disciplines like literature where, oddly enough, Orwell is thought of as a kind of reactionary, following Adorno and Horkheimer's denunciation of clear writing as a tool of the "culture industry" and a tyrannization of thought. The problem is however that by increasingly spending their time on problems like this, intellectual leftists have very little time left over for books like Davis', which is maybe why the right-wing has such power in setting the terms of the debate today. On the other hand, of course, it is hard to know how we are going to get beyond the terms of our present debate without the work being done in our universities. Still, I think that Davis' book is a good one, and as for these alleged mistakes of fact, well, that is what everyone always says about leftist books-even though after a while they usually check out. Davis in short is in a tough position: to the academics he doesn't look radical enough, while to everyone else he looks plenty radical. I would say that I would like to see more books like Davis'; I think there needs to be more popularization of the sorts of ideas being kicked around in the hallways of our universities. To academics, that risks the purity of their thought, but that sort of thinking seems to me to put the cart before the horse. Keep it up, Mr. Davis, and let there be more like you.

i love this book for many reasons. not the least being that this is written from a rarely used perspective in postmodern surface america:one that sees things from symbolism/metaphor. yes, the city is a place in time, home to a majority of the inhabitants of the western world, but also, the city is to be studied carefully because harbingers of the future can be seen in her makeup and change and los angeles, like las vegas, can tell us perhaps more about the future of the west and u.s. in social and cultural terms than perhaps anyplace.a fine read, a disturbing one, perhaps not utopian enough for america, but indeed a neccessary correction from the prevalent boosterism that permeates the american mind.

Mike Davis excavates the history of the future as lived and dreamed in Los Angeles. Davis is a gifted writer, and a gifted intellect. But, he doen't let his intellect blind him to the social complexities of life in the new urban spaces. While other contemporary intellectuals are busy flattering themselves or those they would identify with, the upwardly mobile, Davis offers a completely other possibility for culture and the intellect; his intellect is not window dressing nor the mark of some ersatz high culture crudely associated with money and class, his gift is work, hard work. You know how much hard work he has put into trying to understand and excavate his beloved, no less beloved for being so ugly, Los Angeles, from the first sentence of the book. And his work is a gift to the rest of us, that we may begin to humanize our cities again. We may, if we realize just what a hell we have created for ourselves and how it could be different. The story of how the postmodern city came to be is not written in stone nor was it ever predetermined; it is idiosyncratic and contingent and vulnerable to change in the future.The fine crafting of the sentences, the tremendous intellectual dexterity, and the insights into just what it is we are living are the product of hard work. This writer is a laborer, one whose work inspires hope even as he uncovers a truth that many would forever bury: We are at war against the poor and not only do we not care, we don't even notice. Why? Read this book.