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Author: Mike Davis

Format: Audiobook (Narrator: Tim Campbell)

City of Quartz is an analysis of the politics of Los Angeles in the late 1980s that attempts to explain where LA was at the time and how it got there. Davis, as is probably evident from anyone who is familiar with his work, comes at the question from a solidly left perspective, with firm skepticism of moneyed interests and entrenched power. In the micro, the book is well written and tells a series of interesting stories about LA; each chapter focuses on a different aspect of city politics, from electoral and economic power to gang violence to the influence of the Catholic Church. I particularly enjoyed the first major chapter of the book, which presents a cultural history of LA through the lens of how it has been presented in the popular imagination (noir, etc.).

On the other hand, as someone who isn’t particularly interested in the city of LA itself, the book feels rather dated and parochial - even the “updated” preface was written before the 2008 financial crash. The disjointed nature of each chapter doesn’t help; each chapter truly feels completely separate from each other aside from minor overlaps (“Mayor Bradley” shows up across different topics, as you would expect, for example). Davis also tends to get into the weeds on these issues, which is interesting enough but I don’t know how much I got out of a discussion of the specific politics of the selection of the archbishop for the diocese of Los Angeles. This was especially jarring in the final chapter, which functionally serves as a history of the factory town/suburb of Fontana (and therefore, more directly, as a history of Kaiser Steel), with little to no connection to the previous chapters (other than, I suppose, the connection that capitalism truly haunts all parts of existence). Probably it’d be a completely different book, but I think I would’ve enjoyed the book more if Davis took a broader perspective on LA history / politics - some chapters take this high level view (esp the first and last chapters), while others spend all of their time analyzing 1980s politics. The narrator for the audiobook also was honestly not the most enthralling, which I’m sure didn’t really help.