Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
In this taut and compulsive exploration, Mike Davis recounts the story of Los Angeles with passion, wit and an acute eye for the absurd, the unjust and, often, the dangerous. He tells a lurid tale of greed, manipulation, power and prejudice that has made Los Angeles one of the most cosmopolitan and most class-divided cities in the United States.
'City of Quartz changes intellectual gear - from history to sociology to urban theory - often with consummate ease and fits its diverse threads together in a sort of "history noir". Crime, corruption, gangland demographics, class exploitation, security and urban degeneration are the main stops on the detailed route which Mike Davis follows across Los Angeles.
Winner of the 1990 American Social Science Association Best Book Award,
