Dead cities : a natural history

In his most provocative writing yet, the radical urban theorist Mike Davis explores the combat zone that is contemporary urban America, the site of a perpetual battle waged within cities and against nature.

Davis examines themes of urban life today - white flight, housing and job segregation and discrimination - and looks at areas he calls "national sacrifice zones", military landscapes that simulated warfare and arms production have rendered uninhabitable.

Davis begins his apocalyptically inflected tour with a trip to New York's Ground Zero and to the diabolic miracle of Las Vegas.