5/11/2023 0 Comments City of Quartz by Mike Davis![]() ![]() ![]() Heat 2, the book sequel to Michael Mann's film, is 'fundamentally bizarre' – but superbĪn acerbic and brilliant dissection of that city’s urban history, City of Quartz is an interdisciplinary work of magnitude and significance. It shows how the contest of power shaped, under the promise of progress through endless growth, the city’s spatial and social development in ways that presaged a dystopian future. ![]() This was the essence of the Los Angeles Davis had excavated.Ĭity of Quartz explores political and economic power in 20th-century Los Angeles. Something that looks like diamond but is really cheap, translucent but nothing can be seen in it. Davis later explained it to London Review of Books’ US editor, Adam Shatz. When I first picked up City of Quartz (1990), I wondered at the title, which was left unexplained in the text. The death of the radical historian Mike Davis, on October 25 in San Diego, brings back memories of Los Angeles, and of Davis’s landmark book on that city. In an occasional series, we look at books that have become cultural touchstones. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |