Customer Reviews

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

City of Quartz, the original version, is an excellent book on the history of Los Angeles until 1989, well readable, informative and incisive, a must-read even if some people take offense at views which are neither mainstream nor conservative.
When you finish the book you are very curious as to how that author would write about the years since 1989.
That book still needs to be written.
But in an extensive foreword to this new edition many aspects of the most recent history of the most fascinating metropolis on the planet are touched, the Watts riots and whatnot; obviously there is much more and whoever follows what Davis writes in journals about Katrina-torn New Orleans and other hot topics, google his books !, can't wait until a new, extensively updated "City of Quartz" will be out.

Davis is well-known in radical circles as a popular writer on various issues relating to labor movements and the like. This is essentially a history of the city of Los Angeles and its surroundings from a radical perspective. It's quite well-done and very informative (at least to an ignoramus like me), but Davis goes overboard now and then in seeing a conspiracy to repress the poor behind everything. He also has the tendency to call historical incidences of repression a "holocaust" (he actually uses this word multiple times for different things), which I don't like being used in this manner. Aside from that though, it's a welcome different approach from the usual hagiographic or hip postmodern analyses of conglomeration cities like LA. There's not much more I can say about it, as whether you like his left-wing critical vignettes or not will be mostly a matter of taste - judge it for yourself.

Someone from Los Angeles -- or with more knowledge than me -- might quibble with the conclusions Davis reaches or the ways in which he illuminates the city. However, as someone who is not from there and has never even been there, I found this to be a fascinating read about a place, its history, and its current sociology.

I thought his organization is excellent -- covering politics first and then weaving a story through gang culture, neighborhood topography, and religion -- and his writing is vivid. At several points, I found myself wishing books like this were available on other cities across the United States because I learned so much and thought about things so differently upon finishing it.

A portion of "The City of Quartz" that deals with LA's Jewish Community appears to be refreshingly devoid of political correctness. The author must surely lack concern that his work will serve as fodder for those rare few who still wholeheartedly believe that "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is actually a real document. To quote just a few pearls from "The City of Quartz": "...in a decade when Downtown construction had virtually ceased, the Westside building boom ... generalized architectural Modernism as a distinctive emblem of the Westside society dominated by the Jewish elites" (p.125) Or: "... a group of prominent Westside Jewish liberals, led by the so-called `Malibu Mafia' (Max Palevsky, Harold Willens and Stanley Sheinbaum), undertook to create a broader and more affluent support base..." (p.127)
The author, a safe-proclaimed Socialist and Marxist, has obviously spent an enormous amount of time and effort researching material for what became "The City of Quartz." It was supposed to become his PhD dissertation but was rejected even by the local liberal academic establishment. Sadly, I agree with Mr. Davis' peers who rejected it: instead of a badly needed, well researched, and apolitical historical work, the outcome reads as just another slanted piece of journalism-in-a-book. The high brow style and overabundance of italicized terms (usually one word clichés from "san culottes" to "lebensraum") almost give it a read of your average New Yorker hack doing his usual LA bashing piece. Almost. The book is actually an inside assassination job by someone who, despite growing up in Southern California, could not find a single positive aspect of life in this vibrant metropolis. How sad.

Several years ago I picked this book up on a business trip to L.A. and couldn't put it down. Since then I've become an armchair aficionado of L.A./Southland history and returned to explore the area as often as I can afford. This book has to be compared to the likes of Heidi and Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave" and so forth. It's part essay, part history, and part futurism. As with the "Third Wave" it's full of breathless pronouncements of WHAT HAS BEEN and WHAT WILL BE--except this is more of a dystopian nightmare. Like it or not, L.A. has been the most important city in America--probably the world--since World War Two. This comes thanks to the advent of TV, which sold the world on "fun in the sun." So, if you want to read one grand pronouncement on the darkest possible outcome of modern urban inequality, this is a good one. Just figure it won't turn out as badly as he predicts. Mike Davis is like a stopped clock of the analog variety. He's going to be right twice a day. But it sure is fun to read him going on about it.

A mix of good and bad. Good: exhaustively researched, full of references, some of which I intend to read. A good starting point for many topics. I found his chapter on the history of Fontana fascinating. I also enjoyed the explanation of L.A.'s power elite and its development.

Bad: obsessive, and I mean OBSESSIVE, leftist bias. E.g., the Watts riots are the "Watts rebellion." E.g., his constant, grating mockery of the home ownership dreams of working class white people. E.g., Maxine Waters is a "respected legislator." Actually she's the epitome of the bigoted, shrill, corrupt black politician. E.g., "so-called blighted" areas or "purported high crime areas" the author cites are in fact, not just in his sarcasm, in many cases blighted and high crime and wracked by drugs (e.g., Pico-Union District). Visit it if you don't believe me. Teenagers will rush your car to offer you crack cocaine, fake green cards and underage Salvadoran girls.

Bad: The writing style is wretched. When an author has severe problems, don't publishers provide editors anymore? The author delights in using giant words where small ones would do. Even the well-educated reader needs a dictionary, preferably a huge one, at hand. He also is in love with giant sentences and enormous paragraphs. Junior high English teacher to Davis: short sentences! paragraph breaks!

The writing style is so poor that what could be a brisk, lively read (discounting the author's bias, of course) is not. I ran a sample through readability indexes like the Gunning Fog Index and the Flesch Index and it was off the charts. It is probably unreadable for a high school grad, very tough going for a bright college student, and an agonizing slog, thick as treacle, "dry as sawdust without butter" even for someone with a graduate school education and years of professional writing. (Like myself.) What a shame. Even a mechanical clean-up with smaller words, shorter sentences and four times the paragraph breaks would have transformed this book.

The small number of photos are excellent but very poorly reproduced. More photos, sharply printed, would have been worth thousands of words.

Mike Davis has mastered the linguistic game of authorship. He's writing style demands a high level of awareness to wit and sarcasm. The references, as the woman had said, are stated in way that encourages you to study further. The leftist argument is a bit understated. This is radical beyond negative connotations and stereotypical political stigmas. A book worth reading especially given the economic climate and the underlying tone of superficiality found within America. Don't let his dense articulation overwhelm you. I put this book down once out of intellectual apathy for his dense vernacular but picked it up and can't put it down. It's easing that political vindication I have against our socio-economic system and this vicariousness is only creating higher anticipation to flip the pages.

An unfortunate classic for urban studies. It might be all too valid... Actually it might be gaining validity as time progresses...

I knew very little about L.A. This book is actually a history book. I just loved it and it answered many questions I had.

I caught Mike Davis on an HBO Documentary about gangs in Southern California, and this book was referenced many times. As a resident of Southern California, I was anxious to learn more about the new megalopolis that I now called home.

I anxiously began reading the book, but quickly became disinterested by Mike Davis's relentlessly dry and academic approach in telling the story of Los Angeles. There would be absolutely no mistaking the fact that Mike Davis is an academic, and not a story teller.

The reader is subjected to a million tiny facts about everything that ever happened throughout the history of the city, and by concentrating on every piece of bark on every tree the reader is denied the view of the forrest. It literally felt like this was a book I had to read for some kind of class or homework assignment, and I had to will myself to finish it. I am a voracious reader, but I found this book to be virtually unreadable.

High marks to Mike Davis for the research that must have gone into this book, but low marks for keeping the reader engaged about the material.