I keep this book on my shelf to read again because the history of LA fascinates me. Davis gives an environmental and political history of LA by way of both natural and man-made disasters: earthquakes, floods, housing, recessions, coyotes, mountain lions, the list goes on.

Mike Davis wonderfully weaves together geology, history, literature, zoology, seismology, sociology, and numerous other eclectic interests to once again paint a picture of Los Angeles as ground zero for catastrophe, real and imagined, but also fertile ground for revolt.

Love it

Dewey 303.485

i actually only read the first 3 chapters but i think that counts right??

Ecology and politics of the LA basin - fascinating even if you're waiting for it to slide into the pacific. Did you know they get tornadoes? Guess how many time it's been destroyed in books and movies (once,even, by Bermuda grass).

just clickee on the book and read what everyone else said.

OH AND:

so, people say, "why live in new orleans if you're just going to be wiped out?"

The biblical proportions know no bounds, america. Where would YOU live?

Some portions are dates but not as much as you'd expect. More like a 3.5. The first several chapters are stronger than the latter.

This book was good, but not really what I was expecting. Davis is a great writer whose colloquial language makes extremely scientific matters easy to understand. But he lost me in the latter half of the book, which was entirely dedicated to pop culture and racial tensions. While I understand how those fit into the "imagination of disaster" in Southern California, they seemed haphazardly thrown into the mix, and almost completely disconnected from the ecological issues discussed in the first two hundred pages. Secondly, because the book has no true introduction or conclusion to connect the independent subject matters discussed, each of its seven parts exists as its own manifesto. There is little to no connection between these sections, which makes the book - though fascinating - seem like a disjointed anthology of historical studies about the Los Angeles area at large.

This is one of those fantastic books that brings together random trends into a common theme in a way that is totally original. One of those 'wow I never would have thought of that...' books. Broadly, it's about how the lack of urban planning and the landscape of LA meshes with residents fear of nature and natural disaster. Everything from killer bees, the trend of seeing LA get wiped off the map in movies, to how Malibu came to be private property and yet taxpayers constantly are paying to replace mansions that stand in the way of cyclical firestorms. My favourite chapter was on how urban expansion means there is no longer a gradual change in landscape from urban/wilderness and about how that has led to hysteria about mountain lions attackign innocent LA joggers and killer bees looking to take over the city. Great book. Highly recommended!

A fascinating social and environmental account of Los Angeles’s rise and fall from the mid-1800s to the 1990s. Davis is an apt storyteller despite his tangents veering into the arcane at times.

This would be a 5 star book if not for that excruciatingly uninteresting chapter summarizing disasters in media.