City of Quartz

Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

By: Mike Davis

Narrated by: Tim Campbell

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 West-a 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.

©1990 Verso; Preface 2006 by Mike Davis (P)2018 Tantor

Carefully elaborates LA in historical character

LA is presented as not a given, but as social relations made, unmade and remade in historical time, choices made by individual and group actors yes, but under conditions they ultimately didn't choose.

The metaphor of noir ties in nicely with the felt inexorability of political, social, and geographical upheavals and conflicts given the broader context of forces and relations in motion. Yet, despite this, Davis gives a sense of rebellion even in its most cynical and nihilistic forms as a creative as well as creatively destructive force. The contending classes may end in ruin but not without a fight.

Multifaceted history of a city

Interesting perspectives on Greater Los Angeles, a city I moved to in 1989 -- a year before this book was published.

It covers lots of ground and provides backgrounds of many names I've encountered -- the Chandlers, Hell's Angels, and Kaiser Permanente.

I especially appreciated the essay exploring the history of the archdiocese of Los Angeles with the long tradition of Celtic bishops over a largely Latinx flock.

The reader does make some pronunciation errors which stumble over the authority of the author. Pico Rivera becomes "Riviera" and Los Feliz unhappily becomes "Felix".

good not great

needs to be updated and bridged to 2021. good history but not end of story

A fascinating history of So Cal. land ownership & business.

A fascinating cautionary history of So Cal. land ownership & business. Famous families, secrets, why things failed, or succeeded, who’s who today & how they got there.
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Winston Churchill / George Santayana

Important Urban History Marred by Sneery Narration

Mike Davis's on-the-ground history of LA provides an important framework for understanding late modern urbanization and its many discontents. Providing a different perspective on urbanization from both the Chicago School and its rival at UCLA, Davis illustrates how deep histories of inequality linger in contemporary and future city planning. It is a cautionary tale, but one with potentially transformational insight. Those concerned with the fate of cities should READ this book. I stress reading rather than listening not as I sometimes do--because the content is too nuanced and complex to move through without the aid of footnotes and other details that are muted in oral renditions (though this is true to some extent)--but because Tim Campbell's narration is so relentlessly snarky that there is a sneer or intoned eye roll with every other line. The tone makes complicated, often painful histories seem like a big joke. Moreover, Campbell's mispronunciations grate. Aimee Semple McPherson's first name is pronounced just like the Anglicized "Amy," not Amm-ee. Jones and Laughlin Steel, where my father worked, does not have a hard "f" in Laughlin. It was pronouched "Lock-lin." I could go on. All of this makes a valuable book a painful listen.

Interesting LA history

Interesting, leftist urban history of Los Angeles. At times feels hyperbolic and sensationalized (ex comparing widespread joblessness to literal nuclear disaster) and this is exacerbated by the reader’s dramatic voice, which is reminiscent of the Preview Man. Nonetheless some really educational and revelatory reporting on the power levers operating in LA’s geography including global finance and local politics. Written in 1990, sections on the drug wars, urban development and Latin American asylum seekers directly foreshadow current major political issues.

The City of Angels, a History, a Vision & a Dream!

A powerful text! A must read for those that live or have lived in LA. The truth of history is a call to action for working together in making a better future for all!

Great book!

Been looking for a good history of LA book and this hit a lot of the subjects I was looking for.

Fascinating read

This book is excellently written, although the point, of view, is a little too liberal, for me.

Great Insights to Where BLM Uprisings Come From Institutional Rascism

This book really gives see you insights into how Los Angeles was created including various ways over 150 years. I have no idea about the institutionalized racism that takes place here. It is truly a real estate Nirvana for the people who have made all this money all these years and these sorts of things seem to continue. If you want to learn about Los Angeles, this is a must read book. It was written in 1990 and So many of the things that happened before then repeats itself in the following 30 years. Learn your history and see why the present day is the way it is.