Dead Cities

And Other Tales

Mike Davis (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

448 Seiten

2024
Haymarket Books (Verlag)
979-8-88890-257-8 (ISBN)

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For the late great Mike Davis, the ravaging of the climate by capital—and his prescient analysis of its consequences for those of us left to deal with the resulting crises—was always a central part of his urban geography.

In these wide ranging, incisive, and hauntingly relevant essays, Davis asks us to consider what we would find if we put a microscope to the ruins of Metropolis, and provides a riveting account of the disasters—natural, man-made, and those (as in the case of climate calamity) where the distinction is impossible to make—that he finds on the other end. He begins his examination by sifting through the rubble of the twin towers in the wake of 9/11, presciently identifying the seeds of war already germinating in the scorched soil of ground zero, and closes by considering how little prepared our hollowed out urban infrastructure is to deal with shocks of any kind, be they from car bombs or ice storms. In between we are treated to tours of blasted wastelands where American generals built and destroyed replicas of Berlin, glimpses of Las Vegas’s penchant for annihilating its own best-known landmarks, and other riveting tales of the dialectic between nature and the city.

Dead Cities, written over twenty years ago, abounds with prophecies fulfilled, contains echoes of our current moment where conspiracies abound and anxieties drown out official celebrations of prosperity, and offers dreams of alternative paths not taken.

Mike Davis (1946-2022) was a writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian. He is best known for his investigations of power and class in works such as City of Quartz, Late Victorian Holocausts, and Planet of Slums. His last two non-fiction books were Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism. He was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award.

Preface: The Flames of New York 1

PART I NEON WEST 21

1 ‘White People Are Only a Bad Dream …’ 23

2 Ecocide in Marlboro Country 33

3 Berlin’s Skeleton in Utah’s Closet 65

4 Las Vegas Versus Nature 85

5 Tsunami Memories 107

PART II HOLY GHOSTS 117

6 Pentecostal Earthquake 119

7 Hollywood’s Dark Shadow 127

8 The Infi nite Game 143

9 The Subway That Ate L.A. 183

10 The New Industrial Peonage 191

PART III RIOT CITY 205

11 ‘As Bad as the H-Bomb’ 207

12 Burning All Illusions 227

13 Who Killed L.A.?: A Political Autopsy 239

vi i i DEAD CITIES AND OTHER TALES

14 Fear and Loathing in Compton 275

15 Dante’s Choice 285

PART IV EXTREME SCIENCE 305

16 Cosmic Dancers on History’s Stage? 307

17 Dead Cities: A Natural History 361

18 Strange Times Begin 401

Acknowledgments 419

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	26.09.2024
Einführung	Rebecca Solnit
Zusatzinfo	Illustrations
Verlagsort	Chicago
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 228 mm
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-13	979-8-88890-257-8 / 9798888902578
Zustand	Neuware