Person

Mike Davis

1946-2022

Bylines

Related Excerpts

Boiling House at the Sugar Plantation Asunción, Cuba, 1857.

Slavery Was Crucial for the Development of Capitalism

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World.
Postcard of Wilshire Boulevard

Radical Movements in 1960s L.A.

A review of "Set The Night on Fire", an inspiring book that points to a new generation of activists who remain unbowed by conservative historiographies.

The Many Explosions of Los Angeles in the 1960s

Set the Night on Fire isn't just a portrait of a city in upheaval. It's a history of uprisings for civil rights, against poverty, and for a better world.
John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard.

American Marxism Got Lost on Campus

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.
Still from 'Chinatown' showing Jack Nicholson taking photo.

“Chinatown” at 50, or Seeing Oil Through Cinema

On the 50th anniversary of “Chinatown” and the beginning of the end of petromodernity.
A hotel under construction.

What Really Makes Cities Global?

The Bonaventure Hotel was a battleground in the war between transnational real estate capital and the city’s multiracial working class.
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Escape Therapy

Hyperindividualism has infiltrated our economic, social, and political landscape.
Los Angeles at dusk.

The Politics of Concrete

Infrastructural projects should be understood in terms of whose lives they make more livable—and the futures they enable or foreclose.
"Law and Political Economy Project" logo.

Public Money without Public Goods

By documenting how public debt produced our present nightmare, Destin Jenkins allows us to dream about using public money to mend the ills of our era.

The History of the “Riot” Report

How government commissions became alibis for inaction.
illustration of orange groves with snow-capped mountains in the distance

The Dreams and Myths That Sold LA

How city leaders and real estate barons used sunshine and oranges to market Los Angeles.
Soldiers around tanks on the street.

Want to Understand the 1992 LA Riots? Start with the 1984 LA Olympics

The causes were many, but police brutality and economic insecurity were supercharged in Los Angeles after the 1984 Olympics.