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Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
A witty and engrossing look at Los Angeles' urban ecology and the city's place in America's cultural fantasies
Earthquakes. Wildfires. Floods. Drought. Tornadoes. Snakes in the sea, mountain lions, and a plague of bees. In this controversial tour de force of scholarship, unsparing vision, and inspired writing, Mike Davis, the author of City of Quartz , revisits Los Angeles as a Book of the Apocalypse theme park. By brilliantly juxtaposing L.A.'s fragile natural ecology with its disastrous environmental and social history, he compellingly shows a city deliberately put in harm's way by land developers, builders, and politicians, even as the incalculable toll of inevitable future catastrophe continues to accumulate.
Counterpointing L.A.'s central role in America's fantasy life--the city has been destroyed no less than 138 times in novels and films since 1909--with its wanton denial of its own real history, Davis creates a revelatory kaleidoscope of American fact, imagery, and sensibility.
Drawing upon a vast array of sources, Ecology of Fear meticulously captures the nation's violent malaise and desperate social unease at the millennial end of "the American century."
With savagely entertaining wit and compassionate rage, this book conducts a devastating reconnaissance of our all-too-likely urban future.
Earthquakes. Wildfires. Floods. Drought. Tornadoes. Snakes in the sea, mountain lions, and a plague of bees. In this controversial tour de force of scholarship, unsparing vision, and inspired writing, Mike Davis, the author of City of Quartz , revisits Los Angeles as a Book of the Apocalypse theme park. By brilliantly juxtaposing L.A.'s fragile natural ecology with its disastrous environmental and social history, he compellingly shows a city deliberately put in harm's way by land developers, builders, and politicians, even as the incalculable toll of inevitable future catastrophe continues to accumulate.
Counterpointing L.A.'s central role in America's fantasy life--the city has been destroyed no less than 138 times in novels and films since 1909--with its wanton denial of its own real history, Davis creates a revelatory kaleidoscope of American fact, imagery, and sensibility.
Drawing upon a vast array of sources, Ecology of Fear meticulously captures the nation's violent malaise and desperate social unease at the millennial end of "the American century."
With savagely entertaining wit and compassionate rage, this book conducts a devastating reconnaissance of our all-too-likely urban future.
496 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1992
228 people are currently reading
4614 people want to read
About the author
Mike Davis
232 books675 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 154 reviews
October 8, 2007
This is a good, but flawed, book. Its main attraction is its cataloguing of the many disasters that threaten Los Angeles with Biblical destruction, and the ham-handed ways in which the LA elite have increased the danger through myopic development. Davis devotes chapters to the familar (earthquakes & fires), and the surprising. Who knew that LA had a tornado alley whose existence has been resolutely denied by city officials and the LA Times? Davis is a passionate writer, whose specialty is the depiction of a world gone mad as it is slowly devoured by Angelinos. The human errors shown here give him a broad canvas on which to work.
This book also has some serious flaws. Its structure undercuts the power of its message. Davis begins with a bang, describing the political and economic aftermath of the Northridge quake, but the book becomes LESS apocalyptic with each chapter. His tally of horrors eventually descends to self-parody with warnings about killer bees and flesh-eating vampires. Odder yet, he follows his catalogue of natural dangers with a long chapter (the longest one in the book, in fact) about the many fictional depictions of the destruction of LA. This is a great discussion; Davis seems to have read every lurid paperback, and watched every crummy B-movie, with the death of LA as a plot point. He gives these questionable cultural artifacts the full deconstructionist treatment, using them to examine the signifiers that represent LA's fears of armaggeddon. Obviously, the point is to contrast the fantasy fears of destruction with the very real dangers posed by the natural world. Davis wants to set out what we should or should not be afraid of. That's fine, but the placement of the fiction chapter within the analysis of the "real world" chapters interrupts the logic and flow of his argument.
The other major flaw in this book is Davis himself. His rhetoric and tone are Marxist. He is not a gulag-and breadlines Marxist, of course. Instead, he is the sort of Pop Marxist that is a familiar feature in the cultural and intellectual scene-mostly it's good for getting tenure, seducing nose-ringed co-eds, and impressing the staff at "Vanity Fair." Davis' discussion on the fire danger, contrasting Malibu's wildfires with LA's history of slum fires, is a classic dialectic. He focuses on the evils of Developers, Corporations, and Republicans with the same fervor that the Old Left used to apply to Capitalists and Fascists. He is also at war with human nature itself. I think we can all agree that LA is mostly an ugly, poorly planned city. However, Davis treats this as the result of "greed" and explosive "growth" and the like. He does not admit that this was the result of millions of people moving out west to escape the dreary Midwest to make a new life for themselves and their families. With transplants arriving by the carload, LA's city fathers did not have time to take soil samples and count squirrel populations.
Davis also fails to mention that the post-Sixties LA political scene has been dominated by sclerotic Democrats, not rapacious Republicans. Pete Wilson is repeatedly invoked as a right-wing boogeyman, while Tom Bradley is mentioned only in passing. This is ridiculous, as Bradley was mayor of LA for four terms, during a time when LA began to drift and decline, while Wilson is connected to LA only because he was governor of CA.
(I should mention that the worst writing can be found on the back cover. Some anonymous copyrighter has given us such dubious phrases as "violent malaise," "compassionate rage" and "counterpointing fantasy with reality." "Counterpointing" has to be the most obnoxious misuse of a made up word I have ever seen)
This book also has some serious flaws. Its structure undercuts the power of its message. Davis begins with a bang, describing the political and economic aftermath of the Northridge quake, but the book becomes LESS apocalyptic with each chapter. His tally of horrors eventually descends to self-parody with warnings about killer bees and flesh-eating vampires. Odder yet, he follows his catalogue of natural dangers with a long chapter (the longest one in the book, in fact) about the many fictional depictions of the destruction of LA. This is a great discussion; Davis seems to have read every lurid paperback, and watched every crummy B-movie, with the death of LA as a plot point. He gives these questionable cultural artifacts the full deconstructionist treatment, using them to examine the signifiers that represent LA's fears of armaggeddon. Obviously, the point is to contrast the fantasy fears of destruction with the very real dangers posed by the natural world. Davis wants to set out what we should or should not be afraid of. That's fine, but the placement of the fiction chapter within the analysis of the "real world" chapters interrupts the logic and flow of his argument.
The other major flaw in this book is Davis himself. His rhetoric and tone are Marxist. He is not a gulag-and breadlines Marxist, of course. Instead, he is the sort of Pop Marxist that is a familiar feature in the cultural and intellectual scene-mostly it's good for getting tenure, seducing nose-ringed co-eds, and impressing the staff at "Vanity Fair." Davis' discussion on the fire danger, contrasting Malibu's wildfires with LA's history of slum fires, is a classic dialectic. He focuses on the evils of Developers, Corporations, and Republicans with the same fervor that the Old Left used to apply to Capitalists and Fascists. He is also at war with human nature itself. I think we can all agree that LA is mostly an ugly, poorly planned city. However, Davis treats this as the result of "greed" and explosive "growth" and the like. He does not admit that this was the result of millions of people moving out west to escape the dreary Midwest to make a new life for themselves and their families. With transplants arriving by the carload, LA's city fathers did not have time to take soil samples and count squirrel populations.
Davis also fails to mention that the post-Sixties LA political scene has been dominated by sclerotic Democrats, not rapacious Republicans. Pete Wilson is repeatedly invoked as a right-wing boogeyman, while Tom Bradley is mentioned only in passing. This is ridiculous, as Bradley was mayor of LA for four terms, during a time when LA began to drift and decline, while Wilson is connected to LA only because he was governor of CA.
(I should mention that the worst writing can be found on the back cover. Some anonymous copyrighter has given us such dubious phrases as "violent malaise," "compassionate rage" and "counterpointing fantasy with reality." "Counterpointing" has to be the most obnoxious misuse of a made up word I have ever seen)
October 13, 2019
See I would have given this book four-stars in 2002 when I read it, a great social/environmental history of the southland, how human manipulation and attempts to control the environment, have netted some of the unintended climate consequences and urban ills that were already starting to be a nuisance for city planners at the time the book was written.
Fast forward fifteen years, and this book is prescient about every climate concern regarding fires in Malibu and the regions which have burned in cycles to regrow the land, humans are now littered all over the free land and now we are trying to control the genie of fire danger from doing what it naturally does. Los Angeles is re-wilding the formerly paved rivers, bolstering the seafronts from erosion...it is really happening, and this book gives a great clarion call at a time when city planners still thought they had cities designed to perfection, while treating climate as an externality.
Considering CA just turned off power to a percentage of the state to avoid catastrophe in the wooded forests, this book's considerations which were focused on Los Angeles city planning should be generalized to the whole state.
Mike Davis is a very enjoyable writer, I'm pretty sure I have tried to read about everything else he's written since.
Fast forward fifteen years, and this book is prescient about every climate concern regarding fires in Malibu and the regions which have burned in cycles to regrow the land, humans are now littered all over the free land and now we are trying to control the genie of fire danger from doing what it naturally does. Los Angeles is re-wilding the formerly paved rivers, bolstering the seafronts from erosion...it is really happening, and this book gives a great clarion call at a time when city planners still thought they had cities designed to perfection, while treating climate as an externality.
Considering CA just turned off power to a percentage of the state to avoid catastrophe in the wooded forests, this book's considerations which were focused on Los Angeles city planning should be generalized to the whole state.
Mike Davis is a very enjoyable writer, I'm pretty sure I have tried to read about everything else he's written since.
February 13, 2022
In effect, we think ourselves gods upon the land but are still really just tourists.
Ecology of Fear is loose, if not disparate--an apt analogy of Los Angeles, if you will. It is wild-eyed, it is grim and it does boast a wicked sense of humor. How could it not? Davis embraces the myriad risks and curses which plague this fabled city. Surmising such collectively as fear, Davis concludes that it is only safety (of the Elites only, obviously), a corporate security, which remains a priority, hence surveillance capitalism thrives amongst a low-intensity race war. But the race war is only running cover for the dehumanization of the underclass.
My interest soared with the opening ecological sections and then waned in light of the threat analysis of tornados and killer bees. This is a stirring work, one which has aged rather well.
Ecology of Fear is loose, if not disparate--an apt analogy of Los Angeles, if you will. It is wild-eyed, it is grim and it does boast a wicked sense of humor. How could it not? Davis embraces the myriad risks and curses which plague this fabled city. Surmising such collectively as fear, Davis concludes that it is only safety (of the Elites only, obviously), a corporate security, which remains a priority, hence surveillance capitalism thrives amongst a low-intensity race war. But the race war is only running cover for the dehumanization of the underclass.
My interest soared with the opening ecological sections and then waned in light of the threat analysis of tornados and killer bees. This is a stirring work, one which has aged rather well.
February 24, 2023
I can now say from experience that one of many excellent places in LA to read this book about the environmental catastrophe that *is* LA is the line for the Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood, a "ride" that, among other things, shows you what it would be like to experience a massive earthquake in... a BART station. The bituminous gloom seeping from its pages was a prophylactic balm against the relentlessly inspiring video distractions that played as I waited with several hundred fellow athleisure-sporting Americans while we suffered another excruciatingly perfect California day in an effort to make the wallet-gouging we volunteered for seem worth it.
One main thesis comes in the tornado chapter: "these low-intensity intervals are nurseries of illusion about the Los Angeles envionrment and the extreme events [...] that constitute its ordinary metabolism" (p. 193). While Davis's focus was LA, he could easily have been speaking about all of California, and perhaps the American West, where equilibrium is punctuated by catastrophe at a cadence our civilization cannot accomodate without billions of dollars in damaged infrastructure and the loss of priceless lives. Every Californian should read this book for this reason: we all need to understand the powers that shape this place better than we do, from earthquakes to fires to floods. As I write this we're at the tail end of a series of atmospheric rivers that are only giving us a taste of what's possible. Davis, who sadly died last year, would undoubtedly urge us to hold on to the fear of Sacramento under water or hill towns below fire scars getting washed into the Pacific, to not forget, and act with respect for these powers by rezoning and not rebuilding in flood plains and steep coastal chaparral, but I suspect he would hardly be surprised at our failure to exercise such restraint.
The chapter on catastrophe in fiction was particularly amazing. The quantity of racist invasion stories was astounding to me, not for their racism, necessarily, but just for their volume and redundancy. I wish Davis had also done something to guage the impact of all these works. Presumably they sold, given how many were published, but how did they do relative to other kinds of fiction? I'm sure you could produce a similarly damning list of vitriolic nonsense today, and I'm sure someone's reading it, but are a lot of people reading it? Is it influential?
I'll stop. If you live in California you should read this book, and if you want a place to start, try "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn", which should be required before serving in municipal government in this state.
Notes
p. 15 tocsin (n): an alarm, supposedly derrived from Middle French for "touch a bell"
p. 101 Richard Minnich: "Fuel, not ignitions, causes fire. You can send an arsonist to Death Valley and he'll never be arrested." As with so many problems, proximate causes are never more important than the context that allows them to do excessive damage.
p. 127
p. 128 He recounts an astounding story in the Malibu Times (that I can't verify b/c it's not online) about two housewives who fled the fire in kayaks with their dogs... and left their maids behind.
p. 201 After Barbara Schoener was killed by a mountain lion in the Sierra foothills and the lion was also killed, a fund established to support the cub of the lion apparently raised more than twice as much money as a fund established to support Ms. Schoener's children.
p. 205 Gary Snyder: "the wild is perhaps the very possibility of being eaten by a mountain lion." I feel that, but it's rooted in the 19th century European notions of the sublime, like so much of how we think about the non-human world.
p. 206 He tries to claim that there are more mountain lions in LA than in Yellowstone. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature... claims there are only 34-42 lions in Yellowstone... so that claim is probably accurate, at least at the county level.
p. 234 Davis retells several amazing tales of predatorless prey run amok, one of deer on Mt. Hamilton that I'd love to learn more about, but another WAY more insane one about mice overrunning the town of Taft in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where mice clogged mechanical harvesters used against them and supposedly killed a sheep. Sadly this draws from a single source that isn't freely available.
p. 250 this chronicle of rat- and ground squirrel-borne plague bears comparison to COVID. Plague got a lot of press and resulted in some extreme extermination campaigns, but deaths were in the low to mid triple digits, spread over 30 years, compared to 96,000 Californians dead from COVID in 2 years. From the perspective of our pandemic, or even the 1918 flu pandemic (29k Californians killed), this isn't exactly a disaster on par with quakes, fires, and floods. Still, it's not impossible that plague could jump from squirrels to people again. How would our favorite ecosystem engineers fare then?
One main thesis comes in the tornado chapter: "these low-intensity intervals are nurseries of illusion about the Los Angeles envionrment and the extreme events [...] that constitute its ordinary metabolism" (p. 193). While Davis's focus was LA, he could easily have been speaking about all of California, and perhaps the American West, where equilibrium is punctuated by catastrophe at a cadence our civilization cannot accomodate without billions of dollars in damaged infrastructure and the loss of priceless lives. Every Californian should read this book for this reason: we all need to understand the powers that shape this place better than we do, from earthquakes to fires to floods. As I write this we're at the tail end of a series of atmospheric rivers that are only giving us a taste of what's possible. Davis, who sadly died last year, would undoubtedly urge us to hold on to the fear of Sacramento under water or hill towns below fire scars getting washed into the Pacific, to not forget, and act with respect for these powers by rezoning and not rebuilding in flood plains and steep coastal chaparral, but I suspect he would hardly be surprised at our failure to exercise such restraint.
The chapter on catastrophe in fiction was particularly amazing. The quantity of racist invasion stories was astounding to me, not for their racism, necessarily, but just for their volume and redundancy. I wish Davis had also done something to guage the impact of all these works. Presumably they sold, given how many were published, but how did they do relative to other kinds of fiction? I'm sure you could produce a similarly damning list of vitriolic nonsense today, and I'm sure someone's reading it, but are a lot of people reading it? Is it influential?
I'll stop. If you live in California you should read this book, and if you want a place to start, try "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn", which should be required before serving in municipal government in this state.
Notes
p. 15 tocsin (n): an alarm, supposedly derrived from Middle French for "touch a bell"
p. 101 Richard Minnich: "Fuel, not ignitions, causes fire. You can send an arsonist to Death Valley and he'll never be arrested." As with so many problems, proximate causes are never more important than the context that allows them to do excessive damage.
p. 127
Beneath the flaming hills, the Pacific Coast Highway was paralyzed by a hopeless tangle of arriving fire trucks and fleeing Bentleys, Porsches, and Jeep Cherokees. Hundreds more trekked out on horseback, by bike, or on foot. A few escaped on roller blades. Three hundred sherfiff's deputies were brought in to guard against looting. The chaotic exodus was oddly equalizing: panicky movie stars, clutching their Oscars, mingled with frantic commoners. Confronted once again with its destiny as a fire coast, Malibu replied in the vernacular. "This is hell, dude," one resident told the Los Angeles Times.
p. 128 He recounts an astounding story in the Malibu Times (that I can't verify b/c it's not online) about two housewives who fled the fire in kayaks with their dogs... and left their maids behind.
p. 201 After Barbara Schoener was killed by a mountain lion in the Sierra foothills and the lion was also killed, a fund established to support the cub of the lion apparently raised more than twice as much money as a fund established to support Ms. Schoener's children.
p. 205 Gary Snyder: "the wild is perhaps the very possibility of being eaten by a mountain lion." I feel that, but it's rooted in the 19th century European notions of the sublime, like so much of how we think about the non-human world.
p. 206 He tries to claim that there are more mountain lions in LA than in Yellowstone. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature... claims there are only 34-42 lions in Yellowstone... so that claim is probably accurate, at least at the county level.
p. 234 Davis retells several amazing tales of predatorless prey run amok, one of deer on Mt. Hamilton that I'd love to learn more about, but another WAY more insane one about mice overrunning the town of Taft in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where mice clogged mechanical harvesters used against them and supposedly killed a sheep. Sadly this draws from a single source that isn't freely available.
p. 250 this chronicle of rat- and ground squirrel-borne plague bears comparison to COVID. Plague got a lot of press and resulted in some extreme extermination campaigns, but deaths were in the low to mid triple digits, spread over 30 years, compared to 96,000 Californians dead from COVID in 2 years. From the perspective of our pandemic, or even the 1918 flu pandemic (29k Californians killed), this isn't exactly a disaster on par with quakes, fires, and floods. Still, it's not impossible that plague could jump from squirrels to people again. How would our favorite ecosystem engineers fare then?
August 3, 2015
Mike Davis writes like he is gossiping with you in the corner of a diner. At the same time, he seems like that kid you grew up with who is always embellishing his stories. Although the gossip is good, you don't always know if you can believe that things are really that bad.
I was ready to give this book 5 stars after the first few chapters on earthquakes, city development, and wildfires. But, the following chapters on tornadoes and literary tales of LA's destruction weren't very good. The chapter on tornadoes was too detailed and boring. In literary survey chapter, he seemed to be talking about the same book over-and-over. I think he could have woven the chapter on fiction into some of the other chapters to highlight some of the other disasters. The last chapter on violence was also pretty good.
I was ready to give this book 5 stars after the first few chapters on earthquakes, city development, and wildfires. But, the following chapters on tornadoes and literary tales of LA's destruction weren't very good. The chapter on tornadoes was too detailed and boring. In literary survey chapter, he seemed to be talking about the same book over-and-over. I think he could have woven the chapter on fiction into some of the other chapters to highlight some of the other disasters. The last chapter on violence was also pretty good.
March 26, 2015
Davis had some excellent point to make about the often schizophrenic sociological landscape of LA in City of Quartz. But by the time this book rolled around he'd run out of much to say. Yes, he has a lot of scary anecdotes about all the natural disasters that can potentially fall L.A. But so what? It's not clear Davis has any solution, other than maybe that people should just pack-up and leave L.A. (for where?). As an aside, I've always wondered why there's this double standard with regard to that city - other, even more densely populated cities around the world are prone to equal or greater peril than Los Angeles. Yet there's this academic and literary cottage industry dedicated to telling Angelenos that their city is uniquely doomed. Some sort of wish fulfillment, I guess.
Anyway, Davis ultimately comes across as merely a city-hater, the sort of leftist who fantasizes about utopian communities in the rural countryside without ever considering that (1) if all the people in the city left for the countryside it wouldn't be countryside much longer, or (2) while American cities have historically had their share of ugly racist episodes and capitalist exploitation, they have also played a vital role as places of opportunity for immigrants, racial minorities, and historically oppressed populations such as the GLBT community.
Anyway, Davis ultimately comes across as merely a city-hater, the sort of leftist who fantasizes about utopian communities in the rural countryside without ever considering that (1) if all the people in the city left for the countryside it wouldn't be countryside much longer, or (2) while American cities have historically had their share of ugly racist episodes and capitalist exploitation, they have also played a vital role as places of opportunity for immigrants, racial minorities, and historically oppressed populations such as the GLBT community.
January 6, 2025
Mike Davis everyone! You are guided by an expert through the ecology of LA and the bigger questions of fear in LA. Davis confronts the ugliness of our urban identity and its racial tensions, class inequality, and ecological disasters.
For anyone who is looking to think more critically about LA and also read about the 1990s predication of LAs future (spoiler alert, alarmingly accurate)
For anyone who is looking to think more critically about LA and also read about the 1990s predication of LAs future (spoiler alert, alarmingly accurate)
November 5, 2022
Nostalgia is a real treat. Through the pains and hardships of everyday life, there are still some names that when ringing through our ears inspire a smile from better times. We may not have met this person; visited this place; or even lived at that time, and yet we can still get that shot of bliss to contrast against whatever “ughships” we may be facing.
True, this is a corny way to start a review, but I suspect my nostalgic feelings towards the author are not dissimilar to popular conceptions of place driving much of this disaster hysteria.
Mike Davis is an author I encountered a few times throughout my Undergrad Human Geo courses, primarily for his “Planet of Slums” and interesting article titled: “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn”. His sardonic style, approachable prose, and unmatched topical matter easily cemented him as a classic of my human geo canon, with me (and several scholars) considering him to be the major scholar of the Los Angeles school of urbanism.
So you can imagine my joy at seeing his name at a used bookstore. I purchased the book days before his recent tragic passing. Having learnt of the loss, I quickly moved this book to the top of my reading queue to honor his memory.
And man, was there a lot to honor.
Theoretically, in the year 2022, a book compiling the natural disaster complex of LA should not be full of shocks. It’s been “trendy” for decades now to shit on the postindustrial metropolises of yesteryear, the old suburban orders begging for a spoonful of gentrification to clear their blights. The Clevelands begging to have a shot of being Columbus, the Milwaukees seething at the success of the smarty-pants Madisons, and the LAs writhing under the salience of their younger/prettier brothers San FranJose.
Discursively, LA fits in with this crowd of “losing cities” rusting away in Richard Florida’s rubbish bin, but the question is why?
LA is the 2nd largest city in the US, one of the largest in North America, and a pretty major city on the world stage. It is the largest county in the US (by far), the center of one of the world’s largest economies, and nowadays a major port of entry for our constantly reconfiguring globalizing economy. LA is not bleeding population like it’s Midwestern cousins, LA is not without a dominant industry (Hollywood has yet to return to Hoboken), and LA is not without growth centers (the Inland Empire (who for the sake of Davis’s definition is being lumped with LA) has yet to halt its imperial ambitions).
These questions may seem irrelevant to this review, but I am trying to give the reader a sense of the broader issues Davis is wrestling with here. It would be a mistake to read this book solely as an encyclopedia of LAtastrophes (though if one wishes to do this, they can, and will still be very pleased with the results). Davis discusses too much history, political developments, social movements, ideologies, scientific definitions, and literary oddities for this to be purely an assessment of natural disasters….. right? Well, maybe the two aren’t all that separate.
Natural disasters are a universal phenomenon. Anyone who has been a community long enough will develop an individual and collective memory of a shared disaster/trauma regardless of the nature/intensity of the incident. These catastrophes are the bread and butter of local media and some of the key driving forces behind local histories. We discuss these events as exceptions of our local regimes because of their extreme nature.
And yet, after going through 400 pages of unimaginable LAtastrophes (I will give brief highlights later, but rly the reader should discover these for themselves), it is hard to continue imagining these events as exceptional. Sure, it might be possible that LA really is at the confluence of the most violent natural geographies imaginable for a major metropolitan area, and Davis does provide the exceptional statistics to at least somewhat support this hypothesis. However, there is a likelier explanation, backed-up by the historic power-holders, Davis subtly provides throughout the text: the natural disasters are not exceptional to Los Angeles, they are a built-in feature.
This is certainly more evident in certain LAtastrophes over others, but the way every disaster is handled/reported shows an underlying trend of complacency and subversion. The whole-scale manipulation of SoCal’s fragile chaparral ecosystem, combined with climate change and an endless supply of combustible material has expanded the size and strength of pyrogeographies across the region. Though authorities constantly attempt to blame such fires on the lone arsonist, the historical record is clear on both the precedent for wildfires and the exceptional nature of recent fires. The natural and artificial aspects are not ones to be separated, they interact with one another to produce a terrible hellscape. It’s even worse with the maneaters of LA, unnatural predators humans have cultivated/preserved to feast on unsuspecting humans. The fact that most people (myself included!) was unaware LA even could have a tornado, let alone a tornado alley(!), testifies to the strength of local boosters in promoting a vision of LA that though not disaster free (earthquakes are pretty tough to cover up), is certainly free from the disasters where you (typically, an unsuspecting Midwesterner) are from.
The difficulties of setting aside the natural aspects of these phenomena (Davis provides a sufficient amount of scientific facts to establish that all these problems indeed existed in the LA region prior to urbanization) from the artificial boosters (primarily poor urban design, greedy land grabbing capitalists, and an unfathomable level of official denial/non-responses) highlights an even more fundamental point brought up midway into Davis’ book: the follies of separating man from nature. This dichotomy, an oft-discussed topic of environmental geography, attempts to place people/society in an exceptional light immune to the grotesque aspects of unfettered “wilderness” (I use the cringy term purely to highlight the opposition’s point). What Davis is warning us here is that by maintaining this divide, we must accept that natural disasters are always exceptional events and their severity/frequency are simply the results of some force overtly punishing us, perhaps for aspects of society we are less proud of. Davis’ chapter on the various literary destructions of LA masterfully highlight the alarming bevy of views sympathetic to this local masochism.
But these disasters are only wholly natural to the extent that we accept our society and it’s choices as natural. Regardless of where you draw your definitions, we must accept that our policies can and do affect how we experience natural disasters. The purely exceptional status we afford to them only reinforces the status quo of local regimes, which almost always tilt towards increased severity of disasters. Yea, things are not just getting worse because people are awful, in fact adopting such an overly cynical view only precludes any collective action that may reduce the severity of these incidents.
This book is a treasure trope of urban/environmental geographies, and the points I highlighted are only some of the many Davis makes throughout the work. Like any good author, Mike (can I call him Mike?) forces the reader to ponder questions they didn’t have before going into the work about subjects they couldn’t imagine to be related to the title. Do not be fooled, this is indeed a fantastic book for anyone wanting to learn about LA (and it’s hinterlands) and/or urban scale natural disasters, no prerequisites required! The pages flow smoothly, the prose is very ideal, the tone is witty and sardonic, the chapters are well organized and distinct from one another, and the material comes from all over the historical record. Though a not-insignificant amount of discussion is devoted to Mike’s present of the mid-90s post Northridge neoliberal regime, I would still consider the work to be timeless for any discussion of natural disasters and/or cities.
Additionally, there are tons of little things this book does surprisingly well. This may be the best use of footnotes I have seen from a book, I genuinely felt empowered after reading each one of them. Also, for only having access to 90s-era mapping tools, Mike’s got some of the nicest maps I’ve seen from an academic work. They are aesthetically consistent with the material, placed in a decent interval, and effectively highlight the geographies liberally referenced throughout the book. Mike also has a bevy of photos/other media that really help ground the reader in the subject’s sensibilities.
And for those who like minor references to the historically absurd, this is your book. I kept a list of all the neat “Google laters” Mike generously provides the reader, and it’s got some pretty wack names.
Finally, the diagram of the post-modern Burgess model is simply stunning. Like, desktop background level of stunning.
Overall, this is not just a phenomenal 5-star read, but one that really makes you rethink how you think about the subject matter. Having reached the end I am eager to excavate Mike’s other works, and understand how his teachings influenced one of my other favorite writers, Juan de Lara (Davis’ protege), to write one of my favorite works: “Inland Shift”. Mike, Rest In Peace and Power. A legendary geographer of the likes of Doreen Massey and David Harvey.
So what are you waiting for? Go find out why we absolutely should let Malibu burn!
True, this is a corny way to start a review, but I suspect my nostalgic feelings towards the author are not dissimilar to popular conceptions of place driving much of this disaster hysteria.
Mike Davis is an author I encountered a few times throughout my Undergrad Human Geo courses, primarily for his “Planet of Slums” and interesting article titled: “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn”. His sardonic style, approachable prose, and unmatched topical matter easily cemented him as a classic of my human geo canon, with me (and several scholars) considering him to be the major scholar of the Los Angeles school of urbanism.
So you can imagine my joy at seeing his name at a used bookstore. I purchased the book days before his recent tragic passing. Having learnt of the loss, I quickly moved this book to the top of my reading queue to honor his memory.
And man, was there a lot to honor.
Theoretically, in the year 2022, a book compiling the natural disaster complex of LA should not be full of shocks. It’s been “trendy” for decades now to shit on the postindustrial metropolises of yesteryear, the old suburban orders begging for a spoonful of gentrification to clear their blights. The Clevelands begging to have a shot of being Columbus, the Milwaukees seething at the success of the smarty-pants Madisons, and the LAs writhing under the salience of their younger/prettier brothers San FranJose.
Discursively, LA fits in with this crowd of “losing cities” rusting away in Richard Florida’s rubbish bin, but the question is why?
LA is the 2nd largest city in the US, one of the largest in North America, and a pretty major city on the world stage. It is the largest county in the US (by far), the center of one of the world’s largest economies, and nowadays a major port of entry for our constantly reconfiguring globalizing economy. LA is not bleeding population like it’s Midwestern cousins, LA is not without a dominant industry (Hollywood has yet to return to Hoboken), and LA is not without growth centers (the Inland Empire (who for the sake of Davis’s definition is being lumped with LA) has yet to halt its imperial ambitions).
These questions may seem irrelevant to this review, but I am trying to give the reader a sense of the broader issues Davis is wrestling with here. It would be a mistake to read this book solely as an encyclopedia of LAtastrophes (though if one wishes to do this, they can, and will still be very pleased with the results). Davis discusses too much history, political developments, social movements, ideologies, scientific definitions, and literary oddities for this to be purely an assessment of natural disasters….. right? Well, maybe the two aren’t all that separate.
Natural disasters are a universal phenomenon. Anyone who has been a community long enough will develop an individual and collective memory of a shared disaster/trauma regardless of the nature/intensity of the incident. These catastrophes are the bread and butter of local media and some of the key driving forces behind local histories. We discuss these events as exceptions of our local regimes because of their extreme nature.
And yet, after going through 400 pages of unimaginable LAtastrophes (I will give brief highlights later, but rly the reader should discover these for themselves), it is hard to continue imagining these events as exceptional. Sure, it might be possible that LA really is at the confluence of the most violent natural geographies imaginable for a major metropolitan area, and Davis does provide the exceptional statistics to at least somewhat support this hypothesis. However, there is a likelier explanation, backed-up by the historic power-holders, Davis subtly provides throughout the text: the natural disasters are not exceptional to Los Angeles, they are a built-in feature.
This is certainly more evident in certain LAtastrophes over others, but the way every disaster is handled/reported shows an underlying trend of complacency and subversion. The whole-scale manipulation of SoCal’s fragile chaparral ecosystem, combined with climate change and an endless supply of combustible material has expanded the size and strength of pyrogeographies across the region. Though authorities constantly attempt to blame such fires on the lone arsonist, the historical record is clear on both the precedent for wildfires and the exceptional nature of recent fires. The natural and artificial aspects are not ones to be separated, they interact with one another to produce a terrible hellscape. It’s even worse with the maneaters of LA, unnatural predators humans have cultivated/preserved to feast on unsuspecting humans. The fact that most people (myself included!) was unaware LA even could have a tornado, let alone a tornado alley(!), testifies to the strength of local boosters in promoting a vision of LA that though not disaster free (earthquakes are pretty tough to cover up), is certainly free from the disasters where you (typically, an unsuspecting Midwesterner) are from.
The difficulties of setting aside the natural aspects of these phenomena (Davis provides a sufficient amount of scientific facts to establish that all these problems indeed existed in the LA region prior to urbanization) from the artificial boosters (primarily poor urban design, greedy land grabbing capitalists, and an unfathomable level of official denial/non-responses) highlights an even more fundamental point brought up midway into Davis’ book: the follies of separating man from nature. This dichotomy, an oft-discussed topic of environmental geography, attempts to place people/society in an exceptional light immune to the grotesque aspects of unfettered “wilderness” (I use the cringy term purely to highlight the opposition’s point). What Davis is warning us here is that by maintaining this divide, we must accept that natural disasters are always exceptional events and their severity/frequency are simply the results of some force overtly punishing us, perhaps for aspects of society we are less proud of. Davis’ chapter on the various literary destructions of LA masterfully highlight the alarming bevy of views sympathetic to this local masochism.
But these disasters are only wholly natural to the extent that we accept our society and it’s choices as natural. Regardless of where you draw your definitions, we must accept that our policies can and do affect how we experience natural disasters. The purely exceptional status we afford to them only reinforces the status quo of local regimes, which almost always tilt towards increased severity of disasters. Yea, things are not just getting worse because people are awful, in fact adopting such an overly cynical view only precludes any collective action that may reduce the severity of these incidents.
This book is a treasure trope of urban/environmental geographies, and the points I highlighted are only some of the many Davis makes throughout the work. Like any good author, Mike (can I call him Mike?) forces the reader to ponder questions they didn’t have before going into the work about subjects they couldn’t imagine to be related to the title. Do not be fooled, this is indeed a fantastic book for anyone wanting to learn about LA (and it’s hinterlands) and/or urban scale natural disasters, no prerequisites required! The pages flow smoothly, the prose is very ideal, the tone is witty and sardonic, the chapters are well organized and distinct from one another, and the material comes from all over the historical record. Though a not-insignificant amount of discussion is devoted to Mike’s present of the mid-90s post Northridge neoliberal regime, I would still consider the work to be timeless for any discussion of natural disasters and/or cities.
Additionally, there are tons of little things this book does surprisingly well. This may be the best use of footnotes I have seen from a book, I genuinely felt empowered after reading each one of them. Also, for only having access to 90s-era mapping tools, Mike’s got some of the nicest maps I’ve seen from an academic work. They are aesthetically consistent with the material, placed in a decent interval, and effectively highlight the geographies liberally referenced throughout the book. Mike also has a bevy of photos/other media that really help ground the reader in the subject’s sensibilities.
And for those who like minor references to the historically absurd, this is your book. I kept a list of all the neat “Google laters” Mike generously provides the reader, and it’s got some pretty wack names.
Finally, the diagram of the post-modern Burgess model is simply stunning. Like, desktop background level of stunning.
Overall, this is not just a phenomenal 5-star read, but one that really makes you rethink how you think about the subject matter. Having reached the end I am eager to excavate Mike’s other works, and understand how his teachings influenced one of my other favorite writers, Juan de Lara (Davis’ protege), to write one of my favorite works: “Inland Shift”. Mike, Rest In Peace and Power. A legendary geographer of the likes of Doreen Massey and David Harvey.
So what are you waiting for? Go find out why we absolutely should let Malibu burn!
June 19, 2013
If you're interested in untangling the roots of Los Angeles' ongoing urban identity crisis, Ecology of Fear is a must-read. Davis convincingly argues that the city's defining feature is fear. Specifically, the constant fear of imminent natural disaster and the socioeconomic anarchy that follows in its wake.
Davis summons copious charts and footnotes and yellowed news clippings to argue that L.A.'s unique brand of fear rests on a combustible environment, but is aggravated by terrible allocation of public space, unfettered development, unresolved class tensions, simmering racial animosities, and a gleefully apocalyptic 20th-century pop culture meme where L.A. gets destroyed over and over.
The first handful of chapters deal with natural disasters (earthquakes, wildfires, tornados, man-eating cougars, etc.), and how L.A. has been lucky (?) to blossom during a period of relative tectonic and meteorological calm. These chapters also show that the natural disasters that have struck L.A. so far have had very unnatural outcomes due to race oppression and roughshod development.
The last two chapters are less grounded in environmental science, and it seems like Davis cut loose and had a little more fun writing them. One surveys all the ways Los Angeles has been destroyed in fiction. My favorite chart in the book tallies all these eschatological ends, the most popular being nukes, another popular one being hordes of invaders, and at least one novel about L.A.'s death by "everything." The final chapter begins as a prescient debunking of Blade Runner and its vision of dystopian future L.A., with its impossibly tall skyscrapers and alien/human melting pot. Davis then goes on to map his vision of future L.A., which has more or less come to pass. He takes us on a journey from inner city to outer suburbs, stopping to describe the dominant fears in each zone and the countermeasures taken to contain them. Davis always expects the worst for L.A., but even he couldn't predict just how parasitic the prison system is on schools today.
Ecology of Fear provided valuable context for a lot of the fears I've formed about Southern California, both while growing up in Anaheim and now as a quasi adult in San Diego. I remember kids at school getting news that their houses had burned down in a wildfire (often on live TV). I remember those terrifying mountain lion warning signs from Cub Scout hikes. I haven't lived through any Big One earthquakes yet, and dear god I hope I never do, considering how much the little ones freak me out. Davis' book helped me realize that these fears aren't just biological—they've been stamped into the terrain and made worse by very specific economic, cultural, and racial forces.
If I have any complaint about the book, it's that Davis feeds the stereotype of Los Angeles as an exceptionally, singularly fucked up place. All cities sweep horrors under their historical rugs. L.A.'s rug might be lumpier than most, but I know it's not the only city covering up dirt. On the other hand, I can't fault Davis for limiting his scope. He's obviously knows L.A. very intimately, chewing through the subject like a termite. I got the sense that I could drive him to any intersection in the city and hear him unspool hours of atrocious stories that took place right at that crossroads.
Ecology of Fear isn't the whole story of L.A., and it certainly isn't neutral. But it's thoroughly researched and written in an engaging voice that waffles between controlled outrage and dark, end-times humor. The next time I drive down to L.A. taking the South 5—that moment I come over the Grapevine and catch my first glimpse of that borderless Southern California sprawl—I know I'll better understand why I've always found that vista slightly spooky.
Davis summons copious charts and footnotes and yellowed news clippings to argue that L.A.'s unique brand of fear rests on a combustible environment, but is aggravated by terrible allocation of public space, unfettered development, unresolved class tensions, simmering racial animosities, and a gleefully apocalyptic 20th-century pop culture meme where L.A. gets destroyed over and over.
The first handful of chapters deal with natural disasters (earthquakes, wildfires, tornados, man-eating cougars, etc.), and how L.A. has been lucky (?) to blossom during a period of relative tectonic and meteorological calm. These chapters also show that the natural disasters that have struck L.A. so far have had very unnatural outcomes due to race oppression and roughshod development.
The last two chapters are less grounded in environmental science, and it seems like Davis cut loose and had a little more fun writing them. One surveys all the ways Los Angeles has been destroyed in fiction. My favorite chart in the book tallies all these eschatological ends, the most popular being nukes, another popular one being hordes of invaders, and at least one novel about L.A.'s death by "everything." The final chapter begins as a prescient debunking of Blade Runner and its vision of dystopian future L.A., with its impossibly tall skyscrapers and alien/human melting pot. Davis then goes on to map his vision of future L.A., which has more or less come to pass. He takes us on a journey from inner city to outer suburbs, stopping to describe the dominant fears in each zone and the countermeasures taken to contain them. Davis always expects the worst for L.A., but even he couldn't predict just how parasitic the prison system is on schools today.
Ecology of Fear provided valuable context for a lot of the fears I've formed about Southern California, both while growing up in Anaheim and now as a quasi adult in San Diego. I remember kids at school getting news that their houses had burned down in a wildfire (often on live TV). I remember those terrifying mountain lion warning signs from Cub Scout hikes. I haven't lived through any Big One earthquakes yet, and dear god I hope I never do, considering how much the little ones freak me out. Davis' book helped me realize that these fears aren't just biological—they've been stamped into the terrain and made worse by very specific economic, cultural, and racial forces.
If I have any complaint about the book, it's that Davis feeds the stereotype of Los Angeles as an exceptionally, singularly fucked up place. All cities sweep horrors under their historical rugs. L.A.'s rug might be lumpier than most, but I know it's not the only city covering up dirt. On the other hand, I can't fault Davis for limiting his scope. He's obviously knows L.A. very intimately, chewing through the subject like a termite. I got the sense that I could drive him to any intersection in the city and hear him unspool hours of atrocious stories that took place right at that crossroads.
Ecology of Fear isn't the whole story of L.A., and it certainly isn't neutral. But it's thoroughly researched and written in an engaging voice that waffles between controlled outrage and dark, end-times humor. The next time I drive down to L.A. taking the South 5—that moment I come over the Grapevine and catch my first glimpse of that borderless Southern California sprawl—I know I'll better understand why I've always found that vista slightly spooky.
Read
April 21, 2025võtsin täna vastu otsuse, et ma olen lõpetanud ka selle raamatuga, mis tähendab vaid seda, et ma saan üle 2,5 kuu lõpuks hakata ENDA isiklikke raamatuvalikuid tegema <3 ja ma olen vaba kunstiakadeemia kureeritud valikust <3 loodetavasti igaveseks.. <3
mõni “akadeemiline” teos oleks siiralt pidanud kas 400lk lühem olema või endale narratiivi välja mõtlema…
sry ma olen väga frustreeritud olnud sellest ..<3
mõni “akadeemiline” teos oleks siiralt pidanud kas 400lk lühem olema või endale narratiivi välja mõtlema…
sry ma olen väga frustreeritud olnud sellest ..<3
December 27, 2023
A loosely related collection of essays built around the central theme that Los Angeles is a disaster-prone wasteland. It argues that LA is unusually vulnerable to disasters (a chapter each to earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, man-eating cougars, and rioting), that American culture is obsessed with this destruction, and that it is at least on some level deserved.
I generally like my books with more empathy than this one. That my preconceived notions of Los Angeles were basically confirmed doesn't really help.
It also feels dated; if it were written now, it would focus more on the coming twinned crises of climate change and drought. The concept of the urban degradation and racialized violence/rioting feels like an 80s nightmare reflected through the lens of rich white suburbanites compared to our present nightmare of skyrocketing income inequality, environmental injustice and police/ICE brutality. Davis seems sympathetic to poor, black, and brown people, but he never gives us their perspective, let alone their words. It would be a more interesting book if he did. I realize I'm complaining about what it *doesn't* do, but it's just weird to read in 2018; it feels like its written in the present tense about a city that doesn't exist anymore, and never quite did.
Two and a half stars.
I generally like my books with more empathy than this one. That my preconceived notions of Los Angeles were basically confirmed doesn't really help.
It also feels dated; if it were written now, it would focus more on the coming twinned crises of climate change and drought. The concept of the urban degradation and racialized violence/rioting feels like an 80s nightmare reflected through the lens of rich white suburbanites compared to our present nightmare of skyrocketing income inequality, environmental injustice and police/ICE brutality. Davis seems sympathetic to poor, black, and brown people, but he never gives us their perspective, let alone their words. It would be a more interesting book if he did. I realize I'm complaining about what it *doesn't* do, but it's just weird to read in 2018; it feels like its written in the present tense about a city that doesn't exist anymore, and never quite did.
Two and a half stars.
June 19, 2024
A very detailed look at human-ecological-geographical relations and histories in the LA area, with a persistent emphasis on how private interests and public (willful) ignorance result in widespread risk, damages, and death. Davis is darkly funny and runs a little bit long but for the most part this book was really enjoyable to read, as a nearly 10-year not-quite-resident of the broader LA area.
Want to be frustrated by the gross history of urban sprawl and ongoing lack of concern for the lives of others? Learn about the history of LA! (Or virtually any other american megacity)
Want to be frustrated by the gross history of urban sprawl and ongoing lack of concern for the lives of others? Learn about the history of LA! (Or virtually any other american megacity)
December 21, 2022
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.
December 20, 2022
This book tells the story of Los Angeles's relationship with the natural forces that surround it. To tell this story, Davis recounts historical events where natural disasters or phenomena shaped the development of the city and times where the built environment exacerbated or mitigated the consequences of natural disaster for some citizens (and distinctly, not for others). Then, he summarizes various fictional accounts of the destruction of Los Angeles (and speculation around its future) to solidify his argument that LA is a city defined by its fear (and ignorance, and romanticizing) of disaster.
I found this book interesting and well-researched, but the sheer density of the book also made it tedious to get through. This was especially true in the later chapters, where it felt more as though Davis was cataloging a huge set of stories instead of focusing on synthesizing what their implications are. Also, this is not Davis's fault, but this book was published over twenty years ago, so what may have felt like bolder claims about the volatility of California's weather feel truer than ever, and I would love to read this book from a 2022 perspective. That being said, I did enjoy this book, and I would certainly recommend at least the first couple of chapters to anyone interested in the relationship between the environments we build and the environments we build them in.
I found this book interesting and well-researched, but the sheer density of the book also made it tedious to get through. This was especially true in the later chapters, where it felt more as though Davis was cataloging a huge set of stories instead of focusing on synthesizing what their implications are. Also, this is not Davis's fault, but this book was published over twenty years ago, so what may have felt like bolder claims about the volatility of California's weather feel truer than ever, and I would love to read this book from a 2022 perspective. That being said, I did enjoy this book, and I would certainly recommend at least the first couple of chapters to anyone interested in the relationship between the environments we build and the environments we build them in.
February 20, 2023
An intriguing read that switches from whimsical to dark and foreboding at the turn of a page. The last third of the book is quite dark, given it was published in 1998, years before 9/11, Citizens United, Trumpism, almost daily mass shootings, George Floyd's murder, and the COVID pandemic.
Perhaps, the book was foretelling? It is said that "as California goes, so goes the nation." Well, the "Ecology of Fear" that germinated in Greater Los Angeles is certainly a national epidemic today.
Having visited LA multiple times in the past year, I would like to say that I feel more hopeful given the many positive experiences we've had there. But, when the headlines are filled with mass shootings and murders, climate disasters and manmade chemical accidents, I begin to think I'm just being naive.
The thing is, if we aren't at least hopeful for the future, then we've already resigned ourselves to the "Ecology of Fear." And that (losing all hope) would be the greatest disaster of them all.
Perhaps, the book was foretelling? It is said that "as California goes, so goes the nation." Well, the "Ecology of Fear" that germinated in Greater Los Angeles is certainly a national epidemic today.
Having visited LA multiple times in the past year, I would like to say that I feel more hopeful given the many positive experiences we've had there. But, when the headlines are filled with mass shootings and murders, climate disasters and manmade chemical accidents, I begin to think I'm just being naive.
The thing is, if we aren't at least hopeful for the future, then we've already resigned ourselves to the "Ecology of Fear." And that (losing all hope) would be the greatest disaster of them all.
March 20, 2018
There's too many spot on lines to possibly narrow down a quote... Such a fascinating read! Who would have thought that Cali is a hot spot for tornadoes, urban fires, wildlife attacks, and hidden pools of Plague?!? To name a few. For anyone who loves history, hazards, and disaster media, this is a book for you.
February 20, 2022
Los Angeles and southern California is undoubtedly the United States capitol for possible disasters. The author walks us through the litany of disasters that have already occurred: earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, floods, droughts, urban-wild interface, and social disintegration. The author also includes a 'goldmine' of literary catastrophe and dystopian novels if that is your type of reading. Although this book was published in 1998, I have to believe that 24 years later it cannot be considered outdated, and that the list of disasters discussed by the author has only grown. This book was one of my late son's college textbooks that I came across while sorting books in his room. The book just happens to be one of the titles cited in the 2020 book, Perilous Bounty by Tom Philpott.
January 16, 2020
really like city or quartz by davis, but this one was just so-so.
September 15, 2022
Very dense, I found myself putting this book down for several weeks and revisiting it. There is a lot of information presented the reader that the author assumes the reader will remember later on, however I found myself having to go back and forth frequently to understand these references. Overall I still found it to be interesting and shed light on the interesting phenomenon of natural disasters in Los Angeles.
June 7, 2023
Yeah obviously we’re fucked
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 13, 2024
unparalleled in its scope & clear analysis of how capital drives who lives & dies under "disaster."
required reading for all angelenos.
required reading for all angelenos.
March 27, 2024
So relevant with climate change and these big dumb boats ruining everything.
Read
January 2, 2024happy new year! most disturbing book I’ve ever read
August 1, 2022
I picked this book up at a store in Coronado when I was out in California on a work trip. I've been interested in learning more about the people and the different cultural regions of that state that occupies such a an important place in the American psyche.
But that's not what I learned. This book is over 400 pages of detailed descriptions of catastrophic California: fault lines; tornadoes; wind storms; mudslides; flash floods; wildfires. I think there was a chapter on tsunami danger as well. California has volatile weather. If you'd like to learn more about the specific events that make the previous sentence a reasonable statement, open this book up.
"The first fatality was a Nisei farmer named Hega who was working in his garden in the Bandini area. Struck directly in the face by a bolt of lightning, he burst into flames in full view of his appalled and horrified neighbors."
But that's not what I learned. This book is over 400 pages of detailed descriptions of catastrophic California: fault lines; tornadoes; wind storms; mudslides; flash floods; wildfires. I think there was a chapter on tsunami danger as well. California has volatile weather. If you'd like to learn more about the specific events that make the previous sentence a reasonable statement, open this book up.
"The first fatality was a Nisei farmer named Hega who was working in his garden in the Bandini area. Struck directly in the face by a bolt of lightning, he burst into flames in full view of his appalled and horrified neighbors."
January 31, 2011
Davis, I think, is the closest thing we have today to the early 20th century's crazed and bearded socialist ranting and handing out mimeographed broadsides on a street corner. In this book, perhaps the most apocalyptic of all his works (although, given the number of books he's written, maybe not, I don't know), he exposes the various ways that LA is, basically, an affront to nature that simply will not stand. And then, after tracing all the REAL ways that nature has tried to destroy LA (earthquakes, fire, tornadoes, mountain lions, bees, etc), he goes on to examine every book and movie he can find where a fictional destruction of the city is presented. And then, as if all that wasn't enough, he tells us about how the real development and future of LA is a much more depressing thing than the "dystopian" view of the future city presented in Blade Runner.
Of course, reading this more than halfway convinces you that:
a) There is no chance that the city will survive for any length of time... although it has certainly continued to do so in the 10+ years since this book was published (albeit with continuing wildfires and the nigh-total collapse of the state of California). Of course, Davis is just using this ecological apocalypticism to riff on the social/economic disasters of class inequality and American decadence and racial strife (speaking of which, I'm not entirely convinced by his argument that post-apocalyptic fiction is, at root, obsessed with race war, but more on that later).
b) LA is the most special, unique place in the world. I always thought that was NYC, didn't you?
Anyway as always with Davis, this is funny and depressing and insightful and makes an eloquent case for the world of capitalist modernity being DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
Of course, reading this more than halfway convinces you that:
a) There is no chance that the city will survive for any length of time... although it has certainly continued to do so in the 10+ years since this book was published (albeit with continuing wildfires and the nigh-total collapse of the state of California). Of course, Davis is just using this ecological apocalypticism to riff on the social/economic disasters of class inequality and American decadence and racial strife (speaking of which, I'm not entirely convinced by his argument that post-apocalyptic fiction is, at root, obsessed with race war, but more on that later).
b) LA is the most special, unique place in the world. I always thought that was NYC, didn't you?
Anyway as always with Davis, this is funny and depressing and insightful and makes an eloquent case for the world of capitalist modernity being DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
November 10, 2009
"The Case for Letting Malibu Burn" was assigned reading for one of my classes several years ago and I remember reading the printout while riding in the back of the car on the return portion of a family trip to Death Valley (to see the wildflowers).
I was fascinated. I think I may have even read some key points out loud to the rest of the family. I meant to find the book it was from and read the whole thing. ...which didn't happen. (My stack of "things to read" only ever seems to grow, no matter how much I do read.) Somehow it didn't even make it onto my list of books I want to get hold of.
This past July my buddy Julian/Mitya came up for a camping trip and the book he finished on the train was this one. And he raved, "This is excellent! You should read it!"
And I was like, "I read a chapter years ago and want to read the rest of it!"
And Julian was all, "Here! You may borrow it!"
So I did. And it was indeed excellent. And I recommend it to others.
It's a little bit dated (published in 1998) but there is a lot that's still relevant to today, especially in a "Cadillac Desert" sense. (Also recommended, by the way.) That being understanding the complex history and motivations helps in understanding how we got into such a mess.
An update on some of the chapters in the book that incorporate the past decade would be fascinating.
I was fascinated. I think I may have even read some key points out loud to the rest of the family. I meant to find the book it was from and read the whole thing. ...which didn't happen. (My stack of "things to read" only ever seems to grow, no matter how much I do read.) Somehow it didn't even make it onto my list of books I want to get hold of.
This past July my buddy Julian/Mitya came up for a camping trip and the book he finished on the train was this one. And he raved, "This is excellent! You should read it!"
And I was like, "I read a chapter years ago and want to read the rest of it!"
And Julian was all, "Here! You may borrow it!"
So I did. And it was indeed excellent. And I recommend it to others.
It's a little bit dated (published in 1998) but there is a lot that's still relevant to today, especially in a "Cadillac Desert" sense. (Also recommended, by the way.) That being understanding the complex history and motivations helps in understanding how we got into such a mess.
An update on some of the chapters in the book that incorporate the past decade would be fascinating.
June 2, 2024
What a generous scholar Mike Davis was. I've read of a few of his books now and they always fascinate, illuminate, and demonstrate of the importance of A) thinking deeply and critically about history (which always already starts now) and B) getting your butt into the archive. Davis read *everything* and he reports back in a lucid and entertaining manner. Ecology of Fear is positively lurid: if you are into disaster porn, distopian dramas or other dark-zone genres, give this a try. Reality bites, capitalism sucks, and Mike Davis caught it all on paper.
September 9, 2010
A wild-eyed book about the apocalypse that is Los Angeles. From fires to earthquakes to tornadoes (strange but true!) to mountain lions to terminators, Davis covers every real and imagined way LA is doomed to die, and the ways in which Angelenos have invited this destruction through greedy and ignorant city planning. Chapters on why Malibu should be allowed to burn and the endless battle against wildlife are the most fascinating.
He gets overly polemical at times. His arguments don't always hold water. And whenever anyone starts concocting elaborate social arguments about why Hollywood has made certain movies, I always find myself thinking, "Are you sure the studios weren't just trying to make a buck?"
The book is about ten years out of date, and suffers a little bit for that, but it was still an interesting and unusual read. Anyone living in LA should check it out.
He gets overly polemical at times. His arguments don't always hold water. And whenever anyone starts concocting elaborate social arguments about why Hollywood has made certain movies, I always find myself thinking, "Are you sure the studios weren't just trying to make a buck?"
The book is about ten years out of date, and suffers a little bit for that, but it was still an interesting and unusual read. Anyone living in LA should check it out.
December 31, 2015
This book illustrates what I've always thought of Los Angeles. It's an an ugly and poorly planned city--if one can call much of that sprawl a real city--that sits in a zone that is highly unsuitable for a large metropolis. Earthquakes, drought, tornadoes and other calamities all threaten to turn the L.A. basin into a real Universal Studios disaster movie. The ecology of Southern California has been raped and pillaged since Europeans first arrived to the present day. While very well researched, I found some of the book slow moving and the chapter on fictional disasters was unnecessary. Overall, though, it gives a good argument as to why Los Angeles should never have evolved into the giant urban blob that it is today. I made my own escape from L.A. after living there for five years in my teens, and I've never looked back.
August 23, 2008
This is an interesting, but not great, book. I read it because my library didn't have a copy of _City of Quartz_. It is a dissection of Southern Californian fears, from fires, earthquakes, and floods to crime to racial demons. There is a lot of fascinating stuff in here (Los Angeles has more tornadoes than Oklahoma City!), but my favorite chapter concerns the literary and filmic destruction of LA. It is occasionally humorous, but I found the history of the popular depiction of racial wars very disturbing - have some of us come nowhere in the last century? I'll finish by noting that many people say that this book is a work of fiction, not history. Had I known that going in, I might not have read it. True or not, Davis' biases are evident.
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