Mike Davis, ya done it again. (And Mr Wiener!) There’s about a thousand movies in here. Give this to someone the next time they thinks 60s LA and California was just the Beach Boys, surfing, Hollywood, white hippies, the Mansons, and Didion. Absorbed the Chicano Moratorium bits the most for reasons that will soon become clear, but my favorite section is the bonkers one about a Buñuelian series of bombings by an anti-Castro terrorist cadre against a hapless folk-rock club whose address got confused with the LA Socialist Party’s due to inept LA Times reporting—lolwat

Great book. Despite the authors' protestations in the intro, this is an incredibly comprehensive and useful history of LA protest and counterculture in the sixties that never loses sight of the power structures these movements opposed. Sometimes the exhaustive nature of the study means the structure gets a bit loose- the last 50 pages (after the Chicano Moratorium movement chapter) feel a little tacked on to the central narrative of the book, but are still compelling. The series of chapters on the Watts uprising and its aftermath are breathtaking.

Took me back to my time in the 60s, reliving moments I'd shared, elucidating events I'd missed or was unaware of. As the authors say in their Epilogue: "From Reagan to Trump, there has been an endless hammering away at caricatures of dopey hippies, traitorous peace protestors, bra-burning feminists, dangerous Black radicals, and commissars of political correctness./However, as this book's two authors have discovered...this rewrite of history from the standpoint of wealthy white men has had minimal impact of the social consciousness of the young people of color who are Los Angeles's future. If anything, their own experiences of nativism, discrimination, sexual harassment and blocked mobility ensure that they will be genuine successors to grandmothers and grandfathers who so long ago raised their clenched fists and demanded power to the people. To keep that circle unbroken, this book was written."

Both an invaluable resource and an underwhelming paperweight. Frequently, this feels like a bitter reminder that, thanks in no small part to the LAPD, LA never had the vibrant social justice movements that populated Berkeley, New York, and Chicago. And so many of the generous, lengthy sections on say, Asian-American solidarity, feel like Davis and Wiener are scrambling for material. Nonetheless, if you want a people’s history of the sixties in LA, there is no better book.

900 plus pages is more than I expected. The story is a familiar one of segregation and freeways built through minority neighbourhoods whose residents were restricted to menial employment. University Students found plenty to protest and the list of acronyms is mind boggling.

To say that the book is comprehensive would be to understate the case. The Notes and Index comprise fully 1/3 of the text. After reading the first half in detail I bowsed the rest I will confess.

AMAZING!

History rhymes.
Excellent, in-depth, exhausting and, ultimately, inspiring

"The atmosphere was charged with the special excitement that occurs when a group of people can see and visibly measure their potential power for the first time."

I wish this could've been the epic sprawl Mike Davis and Jon Weiner hinted at in the beginning of the book (the main text is ~640 pages, the rest being references and notes). Instead, due to publisher concerns—and maybe lack of endurance—we're provided with an account that mostly focuses on the city proper. A damn good one, mind you.

Exhaustive and chronological; short on analysis and interpretation to some extent. Very worthwhile however.

Essential reading

So much happened in the Sixties! Mike Davis and Jon Wiener set out to explain a lot of the details we missed. After reading this book, it comes as no surprise that the bigotry and racism from that time has carried through to today. The positive thing is that the voices of the people who were once disenfranchised and ignored are now being heard and considered. Power to the People!