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City of quartz : excavating the future in Los Angeles

Part of the The Haymarket series ; 305 series
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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.

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Product Details
Pimlico
0712666230 / 9780712666237
Paperback / softback
04/06/1998
United Kingdom
English
ix, 462p. : ill.
24 cm
general Learn More
Reprint. Originally published: London: Verso, 1990.