City of quartz : excavating the future in Los Angeles / Mike Davis ; photographs by Robert Morrow.
By: Davis, Mike
.
Material type: 
BookPublisher: London : Pimlico, 1990Description: 462 p. ; 24 cm. + pbk.ISBN: 0712666230 .Subject(s): Social conditions -- Los Angeles (Calif.) | Real estate development -- California -- Los Angeles | Inner cities -- California -- Los Angeles | Crime -- California -- Los Angeles | Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Politics and governmentDDC classification: 306.0979494 | Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Lending | MTU Bishopstown Library Lending | 306.0979494 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00091684 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
'Courageously broad in its scope, 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' as gripping as any Chandler. ' Listener.
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. As the Joshua trees are ripped from the desert by developers of walled communities protected by 'armed response' security, as yet more concrete is poured to defend Japanese real estate from desperate migrants without work or hope, as a stew of greed, megalonamia and corruption wreaks ever more havoc on his native city, Davis' elegiac tale points to a future in which the sublime and the dreadful are inextricable. That future does not belong to Southern California alone. Terrifyingly it belongs to us all.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Prologue: The view from futures past -- Sunshine or noir? -- Power lines -- Homegrown revolution -- Fortress L.A. -- The hammer and the rock -- New confessions -- Junkyard of dreams.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Unlike most writers on Southern California, Mike Davis is a native son. He was born in Fontana in 1946 and grew up in Bostonia, a now 'lost' hamlet east of San Diego. A former meatcutter and long-distance truckdriver, he teaches urban theory at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is co-editor of The Year Left- An American Socialist Yearbook and author of Prisoners of the American Dream. He is married with one child.A native Minnesotan, Robert Morrow finds that ice-fishing in Southern California leaves something to be desired. He has compensated by taking photographs of the rifle ranges, barbed wire, bullet-ridden police cars, derelict factories, big dogs, and other symbols of daily life in Los Angeles's suburban badlands.