I've been interested in reading more about the history of Los Angeles since having read Lou Cannon's Official Negligence, a book that's rich with L.A. history. City Of Quartz seemed as good a place to start as any. The first few chapters, which deal with the founding movements and philosophical ideas (e.g. Socialism, Boosterism, and the obsession with "Mission" culture) that form the roots of much of L.A.'s gestalt, were fascinating, and seem to hold the polemic to at least a somewhat reasonable level. The chapter "Sunshine Or Noir?" in particular, is something of a masterpiece, and the crowning achievement of this book.

The subsequent chapters are a bit dicier, however. "Power Lines" and "Homground Revolution" are worth reading, though the massive cornucopious ocean of minutiae in these chapters does get a bit mind-numbiing. The leftist polemic begins to swallow the book whole, with terms like "holocaust" and "My Lai" tossed about, by the time we get to "Fortress L.A." and "The Hammer And The Rock". The police are invariably the villains, and the street gangs the victims. The lionization of street gangs, especially The Crips, is especially disturbing. I'm not arguing with the facts so much as the extreme bias, which draws the tensions in L.A. during this period in strictly black-and-white terms, in which law enforcement, and citizens who are justifiably a little freaked out about crime, are caricatured as bogeymen. It's a shame that Davis gets so off the rails, because he has legitimate things to say about the militarization of the LAPD and the creeping tyranny that often come with an overemphasis on security, but his points get lost in the storm of polemic.

I found the chapter dealing with the Catholic Church nearly unreadable, but the final chapter, "Junkyard Of Dreams", provides a useful illustrative example of what can happen when a municipal area (Fontana, in this case) gets caught between the various forces of commerce.

So, for all of its flaws, CoQ is worth looking at, though at times should be taken with a grain of salt. And if you want a good time capsule of the way that L.A. was seen in the pop culture zeitgeist of 1990, this book will take you there.

4 or 4.5. Some chapters are hard to read because he’s a little pedantic but learning about my county and city is such a pleasure, nonetheless. I was in the Westside last month and recalled the content I read from this book, thinking about the urban planning choices of Coldwater Canyon as I drove through it. I love that this book re-sensitized me / made me more perceptive to stuff like that. It was like a third eye in me opened. Anyway, I liked it and I like that he talked about Fontana in the end cause i feel like a lot of people (read: transplants) disregard the Valley and the surrounding suburbs!

“The ultimate world-historical significance - and oddity - of Los Angeles is that is has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism. The same place, as Brecht noted, symbolized both heaven and hell.”

The cranes in the sky will tell you who truly runs Los Angeles: that is the basic premise of this incredible cultural tome. Recommended to me by a very intelligent family friend, but popular among local political nerds for good reason, this is a Southern California odyssey through a very wide range of topics. And while it has a definite socialist bent, anyone who loves history, politics, and architecture will enjoy this.

The picture this book paints is not always a pretty one. The violence that it describes in Los Angeles in the twentieth century is worse than the Troubles in Ireland, the systemic racism on par with the American South, and the corruption the same as notorious Chicago. This book was recommended to me to explore the dominant political power of developers, but it is willing to tear apart every side and their hypocrisies in its pursuit of truth.

One thing I loved about this book is that it is not always super targeted. It is not content with the city limits of Los Angeles, dissecting the smaller incorporated cities in the county where homeowner interest groups held a majority of power. It even leaves the county behind as it flies all the way out to Fontana and the desert beyond the county. This is a broad history text, brought to life with vivid descriptions and narratives.

At its core, this is a book about power. Whether that's corporate power, political power, or the power of social justice, it transcends justice and centuries in our coastal homeland. This book may be aging, and its author now deceased, but its content and themes are as relevant as ever. If you want to explore the intellectual culture of Los Angeles, the kind long denied by writers from places like New York, this book will make you gleeful as it deconstructs our city's myths.