Very high brow "When buildings fall down," full of neat facts like:

During WWII, scientists in nevada and utah recreated german buildings and furniture out of traditional german materials so they could blow it up as accurately as possible.

Super powerful book by Mike Davis about the intersections between economics, culture, geography, and politics.

Once upon a time, City of Quartz was a reference point, the quintessential LA book, name-checked in HBO dialogue and indie-rock songs. Mike Davis, though, seems to be dangerously at risk of being forgotten. I wish to do my small part to prevent this.

Dead Cities is a representation of his thought throughout, and a crystallization of everything you should love about his writing. A onetime SDS activist who stuck to his guns and bore witness to the Reagan bullshit, the Clinton bullshit, and all the rest, a proud representative of the California of hot rods and Okies and brushfires, explicitly not the California of gentle surf and sangria – all those things made Davis uniquely maladapted to the giggling end of history, and therefore made him a sharper analyst.

Some really interesting essays, mostly focused on the western states of the US and Los Angeles in particular, but covering a wide range of topics. The theme of how cities and other inhabited areas "die" because of pollution, politics, government intervention, and economic pressures. There are also interesting bits about mock-ups of European cities built for military experiments during WWII, the prospects of meteor strikes wiping out civilization, and other fun stuff. I get the impression though that the essays were assembled from the author's previous work and the book as a whole does not really give a sense of continuity or sustained argument. My other warning would be that the essays are fairly academic, and some get pretty dry.

Another doozy by about Mike Davis. Not really cities per se...but large swaths of land that happen to be urbanized. Several of the essays focus on LA and LV as emblematic of corporate greed and environmental intransigence. Davis, an urban environmentalist is concerned with how urban America - "in the West" has been poisoned by postmodern urbanism and is as good as dead because of that greed and those assorted environmental catastrophes. This is coupled in LA's case with the inevitable big one, climate change and fire, not to mention the class/race divide. Incredibly researched and foot-noted, it would be interesting to read an updated version of this essay collection, as it was published in 2002, with most of them written pre-9.11, which as we know, changes everything. All you read about Amerikan Downtowns is that they are coming back from the edge and are full of vibrancy, diversity and cultural excitement. Not really true, or true if you are of the meritocracy with education, a job and disposable income. I think the next time I visit my son in LA, I will at least drive through Compton. The final paragraph begins with this sentence: None of this, of course, has had the slighest impac on the (future tropical) city on the Potomac. He ends his last book, "In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire," with a similar tip-of-the-hat to the new Rome on the Potomac. Actually, it was a question, who will cry for the new Rome on the Potomac?