City of Quartz

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SOCIAL HISTORY/ARCHITECTURE Nominated for the National Book Critícs Cincié Award "A visionary rant about the secret meaning of Los Angeles...absolutely fascináting. It's more cyberpunk than any work of fiction could ever be." -William Gibson, author of Neuromancer No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its offlcial boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, L.A. is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fíercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utópia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model eommunities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs as well armed as Beirut militias. In City ofQuartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.'s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He telis us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes,... Tovább

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SOCIAL HISTORY/ARCHITECTURE Nominated for the National Book Critícs Cincié Award "A visionary rant about the secret meaning of Los Angeles...absolutely fascináting. It's more cyberpunk than any work of fiction could ever be." -William Gibson, author of Neuromancer No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its offlcial boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, L.A. is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fíercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utópia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model eommunities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs as well armed as Beirut militias. In City ofQuartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.'s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He telis 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 Nathanael West-a city in which we may glimpse our own future, mirrored with terrifying clarity. "An extraordinary book-tumultuous and brilliant.'-Jonathan kozoi "A brilliant exegesis."-Los Angeles Times "Brilliantly chronicles L.A.'s rise to world-city status.''-Village Voice "A history as fascinating as it is instructive."-77ie Times (London) Vissza