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Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties
A magisterial, kaleidoscopic, riveting history of Los Angeles in the Sixties
Histories of the US Sixties invariably focus on New York City, but Los Angeles was an epicenter of that decade's political and social earthquake. LA was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation--and home to the Chicano walkouts and Moratorium, as well as birthplace of "Asian America" as a political identity, base of the antiwar movement, and of course, center of California counterculture.
Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive history of LA in the Sixties, drawing on extensive archival research, scores of interviews with principal figures of the 1960s movements, and personal histories (both Davis and Wiener are native Los Angelenos). Following on from Davis's award-winning LA history, City of Quartz, and picking up where the celebrated California historian Kevin Starr left off (his eight-volume history of California ends in 1963), Set the Night on Fire is a fascinating historical corrective, delivered in scintillating and fiercely elegant prose.
Histories of the US Sixties invariably focus on New York City, but Los Angeles was an epicenter of that decade's political and social earthquake. LA was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation--and home to the Chicano walkouts and Moratorium, as well as birthplace of "Asian America" as a political identity, base of the antiwar movement, and of course, center of California counterculture.
Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive history of LA in the Sixties, drawing on extensive archival research, scores of interviews with principal figures of the 1960s movements, and personal histories (both Davis and Wiener are native Los Angelenos). Following on from Davis's award-winning LA history, City of Quartz, and picking up where the celebrated California historian Kevin Starr left off (his eight-volume history of California ends in 1963), Set the Night on Fire is a fascinating historical corrective, delivered in scintillating and fiercely elegant prose.
1051 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 14, 2020
198 people are currently reading
6472 people want to read
About the author
Mike Davis
232 books676 followersMike Davis was a social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He was best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. He was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lived in San Diego.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
June 16, 2020
fuck the LAPD
November 28, 2020
So good I forgive it for leaving a Doors song stuck in my head for two weeks. Audiobooked 25 hours of this and it's worth the investment of your life for an understanding--locally based but nationally and internationally relevant--of how the movements of the sixties coalesced, rose and fell, fought the cops and each other, and left behind a legacy that at the end had me legit in tears. Only complaint is that the women's movements seem to kind of get short shrift--not only in terms of length but also in the engagement the authors show. Where they go in depth in so many other struggles, criticizing as well as explicating, they seem curiously unwilling to take women's struggles as seriously.
But anyway, read it. If nothing else it will give you an understanding of why police abolition has to be central to any radical program.
But anyway, read it. If nothing else it will give you an understanding of why police abolition has to be central to any radical program.
May 14, 2020
Set the Night on Fire is Mike Davis and Jon Wiener's gift to the next generation.
Davis' credentials as an an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian combine with the journalistic voice of co-author, Jon Wiener, history professor Emeritus at UC Irvine who's been a contributing editor to The Nation since 1984 to write a history of the sixties and Los Angeles that stands up to the hype. As acclaimed sociologist Barbara Ehrenreich notes in the cover of Set the Night on Fire: this is a history of the sixties written by “two of many peoples’ favorite locals.” It's worth noting that both Davis and Wiener are not only historians of the 1960s, but were active participants each in their own capacity in many of the social movements discussed in this book, including Davis' leadership in the Los Angeles Chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, the anti-war movement on university campuses, the Southern California branch of the Communist Party and the rank-and-file Teamsters movement. Also a member of SDS though on the East Coast, Jon became politicized by the events of Mississippi, Birmingham and Selma and became a journalist working on and in the anti-war movement before moving to Los Angeles in 1969 where as he says there was no shortage of things to report about including the trial to Free Angela Davis and the repression of the Black Panther Party and Cuban reactionary activity.
Though nearly-800 page, Set the Night on Fire manages to feel at times too brief. That isn't only a commentary on the questions it raises but doesn't answer about political theory or methodology (these things are easy enough for an educated reader to infer). Written as a series of short vignettes in more or less chronological order, the authors transport the reader into the 1960s and early 1970s through traditional archives but also their own memory (including diary entries of Davis' experience during the days of the Watts Rebellion).
In Los Angeles, the authors argue, many social movements were anything but insular (where they were separatist in nature, this was often a concerted and political decision): movements for civil rights, housing, education, desegregation, black liberation, the establishment of African American and Chicana/o Studies, anti-war, and of course rock and roll and counterculture (Set the Night on Fire is a reference to a song by The Doors).
Forget everything you know about the 60s, the book seems to say. At least that's how I felt even as someone with more or less expert knowledge of the origins of Chicano movement (I'm a PhD student in the field of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA). If the political argument structuring the book is that the defeats at the level of reforms in the early part of the decade foreclosed avenues for peaceful change toward the end of the decade, then at least one important provocation this book should hold for future generations of lay and academic historians alike is a curiosity about how these untold and buried transmissions of memory can inform future studies and future struggles. I see many a future dissertation emerging from the memories in these pages.
Davis' credentials as an an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian combine with the journalistic voice of co-author, Jon Wiener, history professor Emeritus at UC Irvine who's been a contributing editor to The Nation since 1984 to write a history of the sixties and Los Angeles that stands up to the hype. As acclaimed sociologist Barbara Ehrenreich notes in the cover of Set the Night on Fire: this is a history of the sixties written by “two of many peoples’ favorite locals.” It's worth noting that both Davis and Wiener are not only historians of the 1960s, but were active participants each in their own capacity in many of the social movements discussed in this book, including Davis' leadership in the Los Angeles Chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, the anti-war movement on university campuses, the Southern California branch of the Communist Party and the rank-and-file Teamsters movement. Also a member of SDS though on the East Coast, Jon became politicized by the events of Mississippi, Birmingham and Selma and became a journalist working on and in the anti-war movement before moving to Los Angeles in 1969 where as he says there was no shortage of things to report about including the trial to Free Angela Davis and the repression of the Black Panther Party and Cuban reactionary activity.
Though nearly-800 page, Set the Night on Fire manages to feel at times too brief. That isn't only a commentary on the questions it raises but doesn't answer about political theory or methodology (these things are easy enough for an educated reader to infer). Written as a series of short vignettes in more or less chronological order, the authors transport the reader into the 1960s and early 1970s through traditional archives but also their own memory (including diary entries of Davis' experience during the days of the Watts Rebellion).
In Los Angeles, the authors argue, many social movements were anything but insular (where they were separatist in nature, this was often a concerted and political decision): movements for civil rights, housing, education, desegregation, black liberation, the establishment of African American and Chicana/o Studies, anti-war, and of course rock and roll and counterculture (Set the Night on Fire is a reference to a song by The Doors).
Forget everything you know about the 60s, the book seems to say. At least that's how I felt even as someone with more or less expert knowledge of the origins of Chicano movement (I'm a PhD student in the field of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA). If the political argument structuring the book is that the defeats at the level of reforms in the early part of the decade foreclosed avenues for peaceful change toward the end of the decade, then at least one important provocation this book should hold for future generations of lay and academic historians alike is a curiosity about how these untold and buried transmissions of memory can inform future studies and future struggles. I see many a future dissertation emerging from the memories in these pages.
January 25, 2025
Insanely detailed history of social movements in LA during the 1960s (and slightly beyond) by two not only accomplished historians, but more importantly, participants in the radical movement documented.
It would have been useful for there to have been more examples of labour movement history, and sometimes their analysis could lean slightly too much the liberal side for my liking (for example, criticising La Raza Unida Party for refusing to endorse progressive Democratic election candidates). However, the focus on black and Chicano liberation movements, and specifically within that the movements of high school students, was much appreciated. By laying out this history and the contradictions these movements embodied, there’s so much we can learn for today. And perhaps the most important lesson is: fuck the LAPD.
It would have been useful for there to have been more examples of labour movement history, and sometimes their analysis could lean slightly too much the liberal side for my liking (for example, criticising La Raza Unida Party for refusing to endorse progressive Democratic election candidates). However, the focus on black and Chicano liberation movements, and specifically within that the movements of high school students, was much appreciated. By laying out this history and the contradictions these movements embodied, there’s so much we can learn for today. And perhaps the most important lesson is: fuck the LAPD.
April 21, 2020
This is a magisterial history of Los Angeles in the 1960s. From the Black Panthers and Chicano liberation movement to the gay rights movement and feminism, Davis and Weiner provide a tremendous amount of information that takes the reader deep into a world that has passed. As the pandemic crisis upends the global economy, the relevance for building social movements is more salient than ever. The book is ultimately a descriptive history, closely hewing to the detailed portraits it paints. There is relatively little analysis or reflection from the authors on assessing the strategic choices of actors which obviously mostly failed. Surprisingly the authors who of course are extremely well read (Davis is renowned for his contributions) focus overwhelmingly on social movement history. This was clearly a deliberate choice and the result is impressive. But I found it a bit strange that there is very little attention paid to the left organizations of the time such as the SWP or smaller ones. I perhaps dogmatically thought a book about California in the 1960s might mention Hal Draper, a legendary Bay Area activist, but I do appreciate the commitment to a constricted geographic scope. These are quibbles. This is a must read book.
Read
February 17, 2022Mike Davis strikes again. About as lucid and intelligent an observer of American life as I can imagine, Davis celebrates the now sadly largely forgotten social movements that played a major role in LA life in the 1960s, castigates the figures in politics, policing, and organized religion that deserve castigating, and elevates the working class of a great American city to the heroic role it deserves -- black, Chicano (a basically out-of-date term, but the one they preferred at the time), Asian, and white, queer and straight. The lines of the struggle are clearly drawn, the successes and failures clearly elucidated. Granted, he does fall a bit into a classic trap of leftist historiography, one exemplified by Howard Zinn, in which every ordinary person is a militant-in-waiting, but he does it less than Zinn. And he carries far too much water for Ron Karenga, a man rightly regarded by the Black Panthers as an absolute clown at best and a stooge for the feds and woman-beater at worst. But these are minor quibbles -- the whole is a fantastic history.
June 8, 2020
Timely? Indeed! Mike Davis is an accomplished historian of Los Angeles. Davis and co-author Jon Weiner have returned to 1960s Los Angeles and its profound problems of racial injustice, economic inequality, and other forms of discrimination. The subject matter of this book is political activism - the reaction to these realities, the struggle to overcome them, to transform not only individual lives but the city and all of America. They refer to it as "the movement" - left/radical/revolutionary. The actors are diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. What was the legacy of the movement? To what extent were the goals, strategies, and tactics successful? To what extent were individual lives, the city, and America transformed? Was Los Angeles a kind of crossroads city? Were seeds planted? I remember Zhou Enlai's response (I think in the 1970s or 80s) to a question about the legacy of the French Revolution in world history. He said it was too soon to tell. Perhaps.
The structure of the book is encyclopedic (or Wikipedia-ish). Chapters are relatively short - each with a narrative arc. There were times when I wanted more in the way of analysis, evaluation, or interpretation. For example - gender. A photograph (on the last page of the photo section) shows the women on the staff of the Japanese-American monthly newspaper "Gidra." The caption quoting Laura Pulido states that the photo demonstrated "'a higher level of collective feminist consciousness' than existed in either the Chicana movement or the Black Panthers." Yes, Angela Davis, Dorothy Healy, and NOW have their chapters, but I don't recall discussions about collective feminist consciousness (or the lack thereof) in the book. I guess that's a criticism. Overall, four stars, not five. Here are a couple of book recommendations. If you want to read more about the 1965 Watts Uprising, check out Gerald Horne's book "Fire This Time." On political activism - I was very, very impressed by Micah White's book "The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution" - enlightening and provocative in the best sense of those terms. It is very timely too.
The structure of the book is encyclopedic (or Wikipedia-ish). Chapters are relatively short - each with a narrative arc. There were times when I wanted more in the way of analysis, evaluation, or interpretation. For example - gender. A photograph (on the last page of the photo section) shows the women on the staff of the Japanese-American monthly newspaper "Gidra." The caption quoting Laura Pulido states that the photo demonstrated "'a higher level of collective feminist consciousness' than existed in either the Chicana movement or the Black Panthers." Yes, Angela Davis, Dorothy Healy, and NOW have their chapters, but I don't recall discussions about collective feminist consciousness (or the lack thereof) in the book. I guess that's a criticism. Overall, four stars, not five. Here are a couple of book recommendations. If you want to read more about the 1965 Watts Uprising, check out Gerald Horne's book "Fire This Time." On political activism - I was very, very impressed by Micah White's book "The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution" - enlightening and provocative in the best sense of those terms. It is very timely too.
December 26, 2020
reading a 600 page book is a commitment to not reading other books but boy was this worth it
November 10, 2022
Spectacular. Full review to come
May 8, 2021
This is an eye opening book for me. I have not lived through the 60s. I do live in Los Angeles. Seeing a fairly exhaustive account of what happened in Los Angeles, from how this city grew up, with the names of the parks, the development of the neighborhood, the names of civic buildings, the names of streets, schools and the history of certain neighborhoods... there was tons of social unrest, much of it intensified by the use of police brutality in support of authoritarian individuals in positions of power exerting their authority over those who would want equal treatment by institutions.
Much of the content in this book is over African American civil rights, but there are also feminists, Chicanos rights, Gay rights, and some Asian-American rights. This book covers the Watts Riots (and events leading to it, and after), various events in academia (like those surrounding Angela Davis), the Black Panthers, the NAACP, the Los Angeles Mayoral race (to name a few). Davis and Weiner don't go deep into theory; this is a history. They spell out events in detail, showing how the media, public figures, and the police work in concert to paint a picture justifying their authority all while claiming victimhood and enforcing oppression.
This is a good book to read, simply because of the content, its history gets into some of the nitty-gritty as to how Los Angeles survived the 60s, how the roots of civil rights emerged, and how many things have stayed the same, even while much of it has changed.
Much of the content in this book is over African American civil rights, but there are also feminists, Chicanos rights, Gay rights, and some Asian-American rights. This book covers the Watts Riots (and events leading to it, and after), various events in academia (like those surrounding Angela Davis), the Black Panthers, the NAACP, the Los Angeles Mayoral race (to name a few). Davis and Weiner don't go deep into theory; this is a history. They spell out events in detail, showing how the media, public figures, and the police work in concert to paint a picture justifying their authority all while claiming victimhood and enforcing oppression.
This is a good book to read, simply because of the content, its history gets into some of the nitty-gritty as to how Los Angeles survived the 60s, how the roots of civil rights emerged, and how many things have stayed the same, even while much of it has changed.
June 21, 2024
This book brought me back to AP US History in the best possible way. Immersing myself in the captivating and turbulent history of Los Angeles through Davis' lens was a great experience. Set the Night on Fire offered a newfound understanding -- historical, personal, archival, anecdotal, or otherwise -- of the city I've come to think of as a home. I am grateful for this book and the opportunity to further my pursuits of engaged and informed citizenship. It's like La La Land if it was based on the "Where History Is A Struggle" Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. This is possibly the longest book I have read, but the writing of Mike Davis kept me continuously engaged. His dramatic, intriguing, and captivating storytelling made the complex history of LA incredibly engaging -- each chapter unfolded as a gripping narrative, revealing the struggles, movements, and events that shaped the city.
The meticulous research of the authors was actually crazy, it was thoroughly impressive and inspiring in my own research endeavors. It brought to life the voices and stories of activists, residents, and more who fought for justice and change, as well as shedding light on the immense challenges that movements faced. Would highly recommend a chapter or two that piques your personal interest (table of contents is a beautiful thing). This book is a great read for anyone looking to understand the complex tapestry of Los Angeles and its spirit of resistance and resilience.
The meticulous research of the authors was actually crazy, it was thoroughly impressive and inspiring in my own research endeavors. It brought to life the voices and stories of activists, residents, and more who fought for justice and change, as well as shedding light on the immense challenges that movements faced. Would highly recommend a chapter or two that piques your personal interest (table of contents is a beautiful thing). This book is a great read for anyone looking to understand the complex tapestry of Los Angeles and its spirit of resistance and resilience.
July 4, 2021
Urban social-political history at its best. Argues that the political activism of 1960s Los Angeles was built upon a substratum of rebellion against youth curfews, closed beaches, disciplinary vice principals, draft boards and racist cops. The national and even international spontaneous anti-authoritarianism that defined a generation was also very much about place-specific grievances and personalities. A portrait of “the Movement” in its Los Angeles specific context. While bracingly written, the cast of characters is somewhat dizzying, recreating the characters in student movements at various regional comps and high schools, owners of clubs and catering to noncomformists, and with a particularly deep dive into the internecine politics of Black radicals, notably the war between Ron Karenga’s US and the Black Panthers — always with the menace of the white Establishment, the political authorities in Sacto and DC, and their corrupt and violent police and rightwing white thug supporters. The book is at its best in showing the often visions factional divisions within both the radical movement and the establishment power structure, vividly describing the independent power of the Catholic Church hierarchy, the LAPD, the LA city council vs the Board of Supervisors vs the Mayor vs Sacramento. The establishment bad guys are not a monolith, nor are the resisters a disciplined brigade. Like Los Angeles itself, the narrative sprawls in all directions, a series of tenuously interconnected local stories colliding in space and place. Instead of a clear picture, the cumulative effect is kaleidoscopic (or perhaps psychedelic) in its rendering.
As always with Mike Davis narratives, the narrative is fundamentally about the heroic resistance to The Man, but the political viability of various radical strategies is never really assessed in seriousness. Radicals are good guys, and their failures are always ultimately because of elite perfidy. Even though the book documents how the parts of the Movement that succeeded did so by finding a common cause with political liberals, it never draws a general political conclusion from this, for to do so would require moving off of the romantic attraction to macho radicalism. In this sense the muscular prose mirrors the political attitude, promoting a militant but ultimately musclebound form of political posturing. Despite this, there are many brilliant set pieces, and it will certainly be the definitive tome for decades to come on Los Angeles politics in the 1960s.
As always with Mike Davis narratives, the narrative is fundamentally about the heroic resistance to The Man, but the political viability of various radical strategies is never really assessed in seriousness. Radicals are good guys, and their failures are always ultimately because of elite perfidy. Even though the book documents how the parts of the Movement that succeeded did so by finding a common cause with political liberals, it never draws a general political conclusion from this, for to do so would require moving off of the romantic attraction to macho radicalism. In this sense the muscular prose mirrors the political attitude, promoting a militant but ultimately musclebound form of political posturing. Despite this, there are many brilliant set pieces, and it will certainly be the definitive tome for decades to come on Los Angeles politics in the 1960s.
February 2, 2022
1960s-70s Los Angeles had too many historical moments and names to be packed into a thin volume of 800 pages. And it would take another 400 pages to give Asian American and feminist movements a fairer share of the book. The Cold War politics looming large (and in particular the Vietnam War), Southern California became a center of the whirlwind of civil rights movements against the dangerous white supremacist axis of Sheriff William Parker (and the notoriously brutal LAPD), Mayor Sam Yorty, Cardinal McIntyre, and Governor Ronald Reagan.
Though a relatively dry historical tour of (New) Left ideals, infighting, factionalism, and FBI’s infiltration, it was nevertheless a much wanted reconnection to a moving geography of LA, with hippie music along the way: from South Central to East LA, Downtown, Torrance, Sunset Blvd., Wilshire Blvd., Vermont Ave., Santa Monica, Venice Beach, San Fernando Valley—and most dearly, UCLA, my alma mater. “Dearly” not just in the sense of familiarity, but of an embarrassing realization of how little of its pioneering and controversial role in 60s politics resonates on today’s campus. Its “international” brand is severed from its “California” persona and vice versa. Much of this has to do with how quickly people and institutions forget the Cold War—its damages, debates, and underground coalition alike—while continuing to live with it. Apparently, the Cold War's legacies are more than shadow politics in this decade, to say the least. Shouldn’t UCLA make part of this book a common text, with which to reframe its California-international chapter? (But, to quote Angela Davis when she gave a political speech at Pauley Pavilion upon her hiring, “it might be overestimating the intelligence of the regents” to expect them to support this.)
As much as Mike Davis and Jon Wiener have spilled ink on the expansive list of protests and movements—the Black Panthers, the Watts Renaissance, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, Karenga’s (misogynist) back-to-Africa US movement, the countercultural battle on Sunset Strip, Free Angela Davis, The Free Press, MEChA, the creation of Black Studies and Chicano Studies programs, the Brown Berets, the Blowouts, redlining and Fair Housing, the Ash Grove, The Free Clinics, and Gidra—one can’t escape the feeling that it is only the tip of the iceberg that is being written here. The book serves as a point of departure to a longer, perhaps never-ending, journey.
Though a relatively dry historical tour of (New) Left ideals, infighting, factionalism, and FBI’s infiltration, it was nevertheless a much wanted reconnection to a moving geography of LA, with hippie music along the way: from South Central to East LA, Downtown, Torrance, Sunset Blvd., Wilshire Blvd., Vermont Ave., Santa Monica, Venice Beach, San Fernando Valley—and most dearly, UCLA, my alma mater. “Dearly” not just in the sense of familiarity, but of an embarrassing realization of how little of its pioneering and controversial role in 60s politics resonates on today’s campus. Its “international” brand is severed from its “California” persona and vice versa. Much of this has to do with how quickly people and institutions forget the Cold War—its damages, debates, and underground coalition alike—while continuing to live with it. Apparently, the Cold War's legacies are more than shadow politics in this decade, to say the least. Shouldn’t UCLA make part of this book a common text, with which to reframe its California-international chapter? (But, to quote Angela Davis when she gave a political speech at Pauley Pavilion upon her hiring, “it might be overestimating the intelligence of the regents” to expect them to support this.)
As much as Mike Davis and Jon Wiener have spilled ink on the expansive list of protests and movements—the Black Panthers, the Watts Renaissance, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, Karenga’s (misogynist) back-to-Africa US movement, the countercultural battle on Sunset Strip, Free Angela Davis, The Free Press, MEChA, the creation of Black Studies and Chicano Studies programs, the Brown Berets, the Blowouts, redlining and Fair Housing, the Ash Grove, The Free Clinics, and Gidra—one can’t escape the feeling that it is only the tip of the iceberg that is being written here. The book serves as a point of departure to a longer, perhaps never-ending, journey.
June 29, 2021
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
September 14, 2020
Marvelous. Well organized and incredibly comprehensive, this book is a great account of LA in the sixties, told with love by activists. The authors' first-hand experience with the events and the political landscape gives one the sense of an insider perspective - like talking to the locals on the streets instead of just reading the news. Loved it.
April 3, 2021
An incredibly expansive look at Black, Chicanx, and social movements in LA over the 60s. I would’ve liked more on Asian Americans as there was only a tiny teeny section at the end about the Gidra magazine. The LAPD continues to surveil and prosecute Black and Brown communities as it did decades ago.
February 24, 2022
straight-forward accounts of history are usually my nemeses. i have this fervent, maybe unfounded, but also very very founded, belief that discipline of History is mostly conservative BS -- that restructuring the past into a straight line flattens and, by flattening, can be used as a tool to serve power. that History as some hypothetical, far away entity to "learn" removes the agency from actual history; that we are living history, shaping history now, not separately, outside of history, but inside of history, being subsequently shaped by it and the material conditions we live under. History can be so essentialist; as if certain individuals are worth knowing and others are not; as if certain individuals, very few, have agency while the rest of us watch. history is a process; not isolated facts or acts of greatness or smallness. it happens every day. it's changeable.
i think a good example of "History" is how we talk about Rome. historians seem to really like to lionize, romanticize Rome and its social structures and "democracy." even when criticizing it, we are very interested in Rome. most Romans were enslaved. meanwhile, Roman culture and life and religion is an essential unit in middle/high school history while most courses basically give a big, broad survey of the "dark ages" as if nothing noteworthy happened. yet, during feudalism, no one was enslaved. things weren't great, definitely not utopian, but at least you weren't a slave. at least you had family and friends and a plot or two.
i think History is changing, for the better, but i still don't think it can exist in the form it currently resides as. we need to stop reading history as if ideology or "belief systems" is its base and start reading materialistically. sure, there were "great" ideas throughout history but, i think, very few "ideologies" shaped the way history worked out for most of us. reading history through materialism prioritizes the rest of us, and how we live and fight every day.
this is what Davis and Weiner do. "Set the Night on Fire" is a super straight-forward account of LA in the sixties but, in what's a radical move that really shouldn't be, it prioritizes the movements of the time over the individuals. sure, individuals make up, lead, destroy movements but these fights are only as good as these how these individuals coalesce and protest and loot and riot together. this book is filled with tens of thousands of names of ordinary folks who fought together to liberate LA (mostly) from the LAPD. their methods were different - dancing in the street, protesting, rioting and looting, burning, bearing witness to and reporting on abuses the LA Times wouldn't, singing, fucking, partying, doctoring, lawyering, lobbying, campaigning - but they were all, through their protest, creating a more radical, accepting space. the number of skulls and ribs cracked, kids thrown against cop cars, students handcuffed, and black and brown boys murdered by the LAPD in the last 60 years is almost astronomical and unimaginable. it makes you want to give up. the LAPD, a terrorist organization that unleashes unregulated violence on the vast majority of Angelenos, can still, today, seem unbeatable. every mayoral candidate currently running to replace Garcetti (except one), from the most to least liberal, all support re-funding this monstrous killing machine. it's like we're stuck in a cycle.
and we are. but the only thing that has kept LA from turning into an all-out fascist city-state are the everyday communities tactically organizing for liberation. this book is dedicated to these folks. specifically, the movement elders who were organizing for an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist city long before those buzzwords were posted about in sky blue and baby pink on Instagram. the complexities of these movements and coalitions are perhaps the strength of this book. too oft in History, we look at how things just "happened." nothing just happens. months and years and hours of labor and blood go into each of these movements. the planning it took to make the Freedom Summers a success or the East LA high school Blowouts even possible was intricate and tumultuous and almost impossible. civil rights didn't just "happen"; the chief of the LAPD didn't wake up one day and suddenly decide to support integration. someone needed to throw a stone at his head first.
writing this review, all of this kinda seems obvious. of course, these fights were organized! but i don't often think it is. i had never experienced a history that talked so deeply through community organizing structures and just how folks mobilized to put their bodies on the line. and so many people put their bodies on the line. so many kids went to the South to have their backs broken by skinheads and so many people risked arrest and inevitably getting beaten by the cops and so many people stood in the line of gunfire. people planned this shit. it was brave but purposefully so; it didn't come out of thin air. and the bravery in this volume is overwhelming. it will make you weep. our elders have done so much.
in the end, fuck the lapd fuck the lapd fuck the lapd. and bless the black and brown communities, past and present who never stopped fighting in the face of a world that did everything it could to, literally, break them. utopia is created in resistance.
the lasting image, for me, from this book is a huge crowd of Watts residents protecting one of their own by surrounding a police car and stoning it. as the police presence increased, so did the crowd -- of all ages, genders. the 60s were war but they also showed that we could imagine, and live, something better. but only if we did it together. we can build broad coalitions. this book breathes so much fire into History. it's like a street party that goes way past curfew. you're high as fuck, drunk as fuck. you're dancing with your best friends. this is History. it sets the night on fire!!!!!
i think a good example of "History" is how we talk about Rome. historians seem to really like to lionize, romanticize Rome and its social structures and "democracy." even when criticizing it, we are very interested in Rome. most Romans were enslaved. meanwhile, Roman culture and life and religion is an essential unit in middle/high school history while most courses basically give a big, broad survey of the "dark ages" as if nothing noteworthy happened. yet, during feudalism, no one was enslaved. things weren't great, definitely not utopian, but at least you weren't a slave. at least you had family and friends and a plot or two.
i think History is changing, for the better, but i still don't think it can exist in the form it currently resides as. we need to stop reading history as if ideology or "belief systems" is its base and start reading materialistically. sure, there were "great" ideas throughout history but, i think, very few "ideologies" shaped the way history worked out for most of us. reading history through materialism prioritizes the rest of us, and how we live and fight every day.
this is what Davis and Weiner do. "Set the Night on Fire" is a super straight-forward account of LA in the sixties but, in what's a radical move that really shouldn't be, it prioritizes the movements of the time over the individuals. sure, individuals make up, lead, destroy movements but these fights are only as good as these how these individuals coalesce and protest and loot and riot together. this book is filled with tens of thousands of names of ordinary folks who fought together to liberate LA (mostly) from the LAPD. their methods were different - dancing in the street, protesting, rioting and looting, burning, bearing witness to and reporting on abuses the LA Times wouldn't, singing, fucking, partying, doctoring, lawyering, lobbying, campaigning - but they were all, through their protest, creating a more radical, accepting space. the number of skulls and ribs cracked, kids thrown against cop cars, students handcuffed, and black and brown boys murdered by the LAPD in the last 60 years is almost astronomical and unimaginable. it makes you want to give up. the LAPD, a terrorist organization that unleashes unregulated violence on the vast majority of Angelenos, can still, today, seem unbeatable. every mayoral candidate currently running to replace Garcetti (except one), from the most to least liberal, all support re-funding this monstrous killing machine. it's like we're stuck in a cycle.
and we are. but the only thing that has kept LA from turning into an all-out fascist city-state are the everyday communities tactically organizing for liberation. this book is dedicated to these folks. specifically, the movement elders who were organizing for an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist city long before those buzzwords were posted about in sky blue and baby pink on Instagram. the complexities of these movements and coalitions are perhaps the strength of this book. too oft in History, we look at how things just "happened." nothing just happens. months and years and hours of labor and blood go into each of these movements. the planning it took to make the Freedom Summers a success or the East LA high school Blowouts even possible was intricate and tumultuous and almost impossible. civil rights didn't just "happen"; the chief of the LAPD didn't wake up one day and suddenly decide to support integration. someone needed to throw a stone at his head first.
writing this review, all of this kinda seems obvious. of course, these fights were organized! but i don't often think it is. i had never experienced a history that talked so deeply through community organizing structures and just how folks mobilized to put their bodies on the line. and so many people put their bodies on the line. so many kids went to the South to have their backs broken by skinheads and so many people risked arrest and inevitably getting beaten by the cops and so many people stood in the line of gunfire. people planned this shit. it was brave but purposefully so; it didn't come out of thin air. and the bravery in this volume is overwhelming. it will make you weep. our elders have done so much.
in the end, fuck the lapd fuck the lapd fuck the lapd. and bless the black and brown communities, past and present who never stopped fighting in the face of a world that did everything it could to, literally, break them. utopia is created in resistance.
the lasting image, for me, from this book is a huge crowd of Watts residents protecting one of their own by surrounding a police car and stoning it. as the police presence increased, so did the crowd -- of all ages, genders. the 60s were war but they also showed that we could imagine, and live, something better. but only if we did it together. we can build broad coalitions. this book breathes so much fire into History. it's like a street party that goes way past curfew. you're high as fuck, drunk as fuck. you're dancing with your best friends. this is History. it sets the night on fire!!!!!
September 11, 2025
really interesting, i enjoyed reading this and learned a lot but the authors definitely have some blind spots.
March 29, 2021
Kinetic, beautiful in its detail, and full of extremely relevant history. Reads almost like a memoir without the ego (there’s just a sprinkling of the authors’ personal experience), like a more present and more focused People’s History. I wish it were even longer.
June 17, 2024
BLESS UP I CANT BELIEVE IM FINALLY DONE WITH THIS BOOK.
December 9, 2020
Good information, with some slight errors or oddly argued passages here and there, and sloppily put together. It reads more like an encyclopedia of topics that each really deserves its own dedicated book. Chapters end abruptly, often just as they're starting to get interesting. There's no sense of building up a narrative or view of history between chapters. Davis and Wiener take the very unusual route of waiting until the last few pages of an 800 page book to introduce their thesis. And as a friend pointed out, there's so many names. Names names names names names names names.
May 16, 2021
"Combining comprehensive, mineshaft-deep research with unique firsthand knowledge, their recounting of the radical ’60s in Los Angeles will likely not be surpassed. Davis and Wiener tell a complex story involving webs of relationships along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, and class, in what would today be referred to as intersectionality. One of the major contributions of Set the Night on Fire is the linkage of what have often been viewed as separate events, including the so-called 'Blowouts,' politically inspired secondary-school walkouts that originated among Latino students but soon became multiracial; anti–Vietnam War protests that moved beyond white constituencies to engage Angelenos of color; and black cultural articulations that attracted white leftist support."--From Jerald Podair's review in the Los Angeles Review of Books, available here:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
"Wiener and Davis rescue a lot of previously ignored history with an incisive investigation of L.A.’s minority high school student protests in underfunded and criminally neglected schools in minority districts; it is an essential rescued history, a shocking expose on racist school administration and faculty that was part of the systematic city scheme to create underclasses...They also detail the fights of oppressed Mexican American, Chicano, Hispanic, and Latinx communities and their activists’ movements that also were being strong-armed by the police and city government...Always overshadowed by the cultural flashpoint of the Stonewall Riots in New York, the authors chronicle the often lost history of L.A.’s LGBTQ+ protests in L.A., in 1967, that started at the Black Cat bar and led to a resistance movement by gays and lesbians in Los Angeles to stop LAPD shakedowns of gay bars, routine round-up, and violence against the gay community."--From Lew Whittington's review in the New York Journal of Books available here:
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book...
Movement history at it's best. Essential reading; 5 stars.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
"Wiener and Davis rescue a lot of previously ignored history with an incisive investigation of L.A.’s minority high school student protests in underfunded and criminally neglected schools in minority districts; it is an essential rescued history, a shocking expose on racist school administration and faculty that was part of the systematic city scheme to create underclasses...They also detail the fights of oppressed Mexican American, Chicano, Hispanic, and Latinx communities and their activists’ movements that also were being strong-armed by the police and city government...Always overshadowed by the cultural flashpoint of the Stonewall Riots in New York, the authors chronicle the often lost history of L.A.’s LGBTQ+ protests in L.A., in 1967, that started at the Black Cat bar and led to a resistance movement by gays and lesbians in Los Angeles to stop LAPD shakedowns of gay bars, routine round-up, and violence against the gay community."--From Lew Whittington's review in the New York Journal of Books available here:
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book...
Movement history at it's best. Essential reading; 5 stars.
May 20, 2020
As an individual who studies social injustices and reform academically, I found Mike Davis and John Wiener’s book Set the Night on Fire to embody rich historical accuracy. Exemplifying topics of race, society, and social injustices during 1960’s, will leave readers feeling enlightened. Flawlessly executing the delicate balance of logos, pathos, and ethos to support the story’s credibility, Set the Night on Fire captures a wide range of readers and learners. This book definitely deserves a spot next to top-shelf comparable titles such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Susan Burton’s Becoming Ms. Burton. For those interested in another brilliant book to support the cause, please do not hesitate to pick up this emotionally raw and eye-opening detailed piece of history!
June 6, 2021
AMAZING!
May 6, 2025
"I believe the greatest danger that this country faces today is the possibility of concentration camps of the mind, the dictatorship of big business, of control exercised and expressed through agencies of government determining what people can or cannot think. -Dorothy Healey
Los Angeles, California. The 1960s.
The LAPD makes the case of it being perhaps the most ruthless gang in America. Batons, firehoses, and dogs unleashed on peaceful protesters. Illegal wiretaps. Rampant warrantless entry.
Gay men arrested for kissing ("lewd conduct"). Gay women arrested for what they wear ("impersonation," "masquerading").
Atomic pacifism and nuclear disarmament. Radioactive iodine found in milk.
The House Un-American Activities Committee claim antiwar women's rights groups are communist fronts.
Black neighborhoods condemned and seized for construction of freeways, L.A. Dodgers stadium.
"Sundown towns" where blacks weren't allowed to live and were arrested for being there after 7:00pm.
A surplus of qualified, credentialed black educators, but the jobs went to whites that haven't yet graduated.
Lead pipes and baseball bats await Freedom Riders in Montgomery, while the police looked the other way. Our President, John F. Kennedy, yells at his own Civil Rights Advisor, "Can't you get your goddamn friends off those busses? Stop them!"
Jeeps with roof-mounted machine guns driven by the National Guard patrol neighborhoods. Tanks stand guard at the University of Southern California (USC).
The War on Poverty is defunded to instead support the War in Vietnam.
Muhammad Ali refuses induction, is sentenced to prison, stripped of his title, and banned from boxing.
Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland support their fellow man.
The rise of Angela Davis, her persecution and those around the world standing with her.
Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) established in 1965.
Malcolm X assassinated. Then Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated. Then Bobby Kennedy, too.
Riots at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Millions of student activists protest Nixon sending troops across the border from Vietnam into Cambodia.
Clashes between activists groups and activist leaders orchestrated by the FBI.
Forced sterilizations of women.
Reagan refers to those on Assistance for Needy Children as "Welfare Queens."
The 1960s was a time where cities were set on fire, where hundreds of thousands of Americans were at war in Vietnam, where highschool and college protesters were beaten by cops on campus, and political assassinations were commonplace. And, yet, with all its upheaval and progress made for racial, social, and economic equality, those who today want peace in the Middle East are traitors. Those who want the right to control their own bodies are bra-burning feminists. Those who call for
criminal justice reform and for the protection of our environment are leftwing radicals.
The scary thing is that we see it all happening, and we're not nearly as organized as the generation before us.
Set the Night on Fire is a definitive account of the 1960s within Los Angeles city bounds. On the spectrum of informative nonfiction to straight-up textbook, I'd place this 600+ page door-stopper of a read much more on the academic side. If you understand that going in, it's a dense but worthy read.
3.75 out of 5
Other Quotes
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." -John F. Kennedy
"It is always a great crime to deprive a people of its liberty on the pretext that it is using it wrongly." -Alexis de Tocqueville
"One nation, divisible, with liberty and justice for some." -Margaret Wright
Los Angeles, California. The 1960s.
The LAPD makes the case of it being perhaps the most ruthless gang in America. Batons, firehoses, and dogs unleashed on peaceful protesters. Illegal wiretaps. Rampant warrantless entry.
Gay men arrested for kissing ("lewd conduct"). Gay women arrested for what they wear ("impersonation," "masquerading").
Atomic pacifism and nuclear disarmament. Radioactive iodine found in milk.
The House Un-American Activities Committee claim antiwar women's rights groups are communist fronts.
Black neighborhoods condemned and seized for construction of freeways, L.A. Dodgers stadium.
"Sundown towns" where blacks weren't allowed to live and were arrested for being there after 7:00pm.
A surplus of qualified, credentialed black educators, but the jobs went to whites that haven't yet graduated.
Lead pipes and baseball bats await Freedom Riders in Montgomery, while the police looked the other way. Our President, John F. Kennedy, yells at his own Civil Rights Advisor, "Can't you get your goddamn friends off those busses? Stop them!"
Jeeps with roof-mounted machine guns driven by the National Guard patrol neighborhoods. Tanks stand guard at the University of Southern California (USC).
The War on Poverty is defunded to instead support the War in Vietnam.
Muhammad Ali refuses induction, is sentenced to prison, stripped of his title, and banned from boxing.
Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland support their fellow man.
The rise of Angela Davis, her persecution and those around the world standing with her.
Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) established in 1965.
Malcolm X assassinated. Then Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated. Then Bobby Kennedy, too.
Riots at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Millions of student activists protest Nixon sending troops across the border from Vietnam into Cambodia.
Clashes between activists groups and activist leaders orchestrated by the FBI.
Forced sterilizations of women.
Reagan refers to those on Assistance for Needy Children as "Welfare Queens."
The 1960s was a time where cities were set on fire, where hundreds of thousands of Americans were at war in Vietnam, where highschool and college protesters were beaten by cops on campus, and political assassinations were commonplace. And, yet, with all its upheaval and progress made for racial, social, and economic equality, those who today want peace in the Middle East are traitors. Those who want the right to control their own bodies are bra-burning feminists. Those who call for
criminal justice reform and for the protection of our environment are leftwing radicals.
The scary thing is that we see it all happening, and we're not nearly as organized as the generation before us.
Set the Night on Fire is a definitive account of the 1960s within Los Angeles city bounds. On the spectrum of informative nonfiction to straight-up textbook, I'd place this 600+ page door-stopper of a read much more on the academic side. If you understand that going in, it's a dense but worthy read.
3.75 out of 5
Other Quotes
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." -John F. Kennedy
"It is always a great crime to deprive a people of its liberty on the pretext that it is using it wrongly." -Alexis de Tocqueville
"One nation, divisible, with liberty and justice for some." -Margaret Wright
September 4, 2021
There were many points where I was like AUGHGGH! I LITERALLY grew UP in Los Angeles, why am I JUST learning about this NOW?! And most of the book is crazy interesting and does a good job in the first section of setting the scene for the circumstances that effected the groups covered in the following chapters.
However - and you should know this is serious because I’m flouting grammatical convention - it does feel a little more a like a sampler platter than a complete meal at times, and the authors REALLY tip their hand in the epilogue. They make a very offhanded mention of ‘the rebirth of downtown property values’ being a positive of Bradley’s mayoral term and just completely leave it at that and like... I’m sorry, what?! I need a lot more context for this remark!! Are they seriously trying to say that badly-renovated theme bars and scummy New York developers have been a positive for the city?! COME ON!! On a less personal note, they also refer to ‘pro-immigrant cardinal... mahony’ and like...... that may be true, but, like, it’s probably one of the last epithets I think of when I think of that guy?
I know it sounds insane, but reading that just made me question everything I’d read in the preceding five hundred pages - like, they’d made a lot of people I’d never heard of sound neat! They must be neat! But then they made stuff I know to have been pretty bad sound weirdly positive in the epilogue, SO WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE?! The worst part is that loads of people who will read this will be recent transplants doing so in their ‘lofts’ (buddy..... those are zoned for residential use...... you don’t have to hide the mattress, the kitties, and the stove to prove you only use it as a studio at any time........ they’re not lofts) and they’ll be like yes, downtown used to be terrible but is very cool now, I like whiskey bars that have had their original elements removed and replaced with eyesore repro garbage, I am so disconnected from everything in this city and the world that I cannot help but take everything at its positive face value and somehow feel self-congratulatory about it? And I would not like to be like those people! So now I’m agitated and my husband is going to have to hear me complain about Tom Gilmore at dinner and whine about how no one who writes about Los Angeles really ‘gets it’ as if there’s even an ‘it’ to ‘get’!!
The worst part is I actually liked this book! I’d actually like a WHOLE book about Gidra, who get a paltry fifteen pages at the end, because they seemed really interesting, and I liked learning about all the women’s groups, and it was cool to get all the details about so many things I knew on a cursory or pop cultural level (riots on the sunset strip, Watts, KPFK, Sister Corita Kent, to name a few) BUT the the epilogue threw me into this strange place of not being able to trust anything SO I DON’T KNOW ANY MORE!
If only I were one of those opportunistic New Yorkers, maybe I’d have something articulate to say! But alas I must default to my scattered-yet-charming hyperbole and cross my fingers attempting to put this stuff into words doesn’t mark me as embarrassingly reactionary! But talking about property values feels reactionary! And very coded! I have to go fold the laundry and try not to think about this any more! Parts of this were good! Maybe I need to stop feeling compelled to read personal essays masquerading as smart people books! Definitely I need to end this review now! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
However - and you should know this is serious because I’m flouting grammatical convention - it does feel a little more a like a sampler platter than a complete meal at times, and the authors REALLY tip their hand in the epilogue. They make a very offhanded mention of ‘the rebirth of downtown property values’ being a positive of Bradley’s mayoral term and just completely leave it at that and like... I’m sorry, what?! I need a lot more context for this remark!! Are they seriously trying to say that badly-renovated theme bars and scummy New York developers have been a positive for the city?! COME ON!! On a less personal note, they also refer to ‘pro-immigrant cardinal... mahony’ and like...... that may be true, but, like, it’s probably one of the last epithets I think of when I think of that guy?
I know it sounds insane, but reading that just made me question everything I’d read in the preceding five hundred pages - like, they’d made a lot of people I’d never heard of sound neat! They must be neat! But then they made stuff I know to have been pretty bad sound weirdly positive in the epilogue, SO WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE?! The worst part is that loads of people who will read this will be recent transplants doing so in their ‘lofts’ (buddy..... those are zoned for residential use...... you don’t have to hide the mattress, the kitties, and the stove to prove you only use it as a studio at any time........ they’re not lofts) and they’ll be like yes, downtown used to be terrible but is very cool now, I like whiskey bars that have had their original elements removed and replaced with eyesore repro garbage, I am so disconnected from everything in this city and the world that I cannot help but take everything at its positive face value and somehow feel self-congratulatory about it? And I would not like to be like those people! So now I’m agitated and my husband is going to have to hear me complain about Tom Gilmore at dinner and whine about how no one who writes about Los Angeles really ‘gets it’ as if there’s even an ‘it’ to ‘get’!!
The worst part is I actually liked this book! I’d actually like a WHOLE book about Gidra, who get a paltry fifteen pages at the end, because they seemed really interesting, and I liked learning about all the women’s groups, and it was cool to get all the details about so many things I knew on a cursory or pop cultural level (riots on the sunset strip, Watts, KPFK, Sister Corita Kent, to name a few) BUT the the epilogue threw me into this strange place of not being able to trust anything SO I DON’T KNOW ANY MORE!
If only I were one of those opportunistic New Yorkers, maybe I’d have something articulate to say! But alas I must default to my scattered-yet-charming hyperbole and cross my fingers attempting to put this stuff into words doesn’t mark me as embarrassingly reactionary! But talking about property values feels reactionary! And very coded! I have to go fold the laundry and try not to think about this any more! Parts of this were good! Maybe I need to stop feeling compelled to read personal essays masquerading as smart people books! Definitely I need to end this review now! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
May 24, 2020
A thorough, well-researched history of Los Angeles, Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties, documents the complex histories of several communities and movements in LA. This comprehensive book recounts details omitted from many U.S. history classes and fills those gaps by bringing often ignored groups into the spotlight. Though LA is not representative of the nation as a whole, this book chronicles many of the movements, relationships, and events that later gave rise to nationwide change.
While the book long, the engaging writing style holds the attention of the reader throughout and is well organized. The reader could comfortably read a chapter or two each night. The details presented in each section allow the reader to understand the evolution of the movements and relationships described in the book. These details allow the reader to visualize the steps toward change rather than stopping at an indication that change occurred. This book is a compelling read even for those without an attachment to the city of Los Angeles.
Contemporary change-makers looking for inspiration can use this book to learn about the successful movements of the sixties and their tactics. So many of the tactics are worth revisiting today.
While the book long, the engaging writing style holds the attention of the reader throughout and is well organized. The reader could comfortably read a chapter or two each night. The details presented in each section allow the reader to understand the evolution of the movements and relationships described in the book. These details allow the reader to visualize the steps toward change rather than stopping at an indication that change occurred. This book is a compelling read even for those without an attachment to the city of Los Angeles.
Contemporary change-makers looking for inspiration can use this book to learn about the successful movements of the sixties and their tactics. So many of the tactics are worth revisiting today.
May 19, 2020
This is a fascinating read that lets the reader in on the truth of what LA was really like in the sixties. New York gets a lot of credit and focus for the growth that took place at that time, but LA was much more than just a utopia of Hollywood and movie stars. It was fascinating to learn that the first LGBTQ street protest actually took place in LA and not NYC. In addition, the usual history of Los Angeles does not show the incredible truth of the power that minorities were able to fight for in LA.
This read reveals so much information that everybody should know about the history of Los Angeles and how it effected the growth of America as a whole.
I highly recommend this read.
This read reveals so much information that everybody should know about the history of Los Angeles and how it effected the growth of America as a whole.
I highly recommend this read.
December 21, 2022
It took two months to get through the 800 pages, but damn, I’m so proud of myself for finishing it! It’s a fairly exhaustive history of the 1960s in Los Angeles. I was thrilled to read about my hometown and I learned so much. My high school and my father’s university were both mentioned repeatedly and it helped me to contextual the history of my hometown. I wish that equal time would have been given to all the topics, especially the women’s and LGBTQ movements. But it gave me plenty of new books to add to my reading list so I can continue to learn more.
February 2, 2024
I mean the writing isn't exactly scintillating, but this is an encyclopedia of the time. For that it is worthwhile. (As a historian I do believe we can -- and I do -- write about history with an original voice. Take Mike Davis as just one example).
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