City of quartz by Davis, Mike - 1991: excavating the future in Los Angeles

London: Verso, 1991. First edition, second Impression. Hardcover. Very mild bumping to corners, faint soiling to fore-edges, very gentle rubbing to spine head and foot, bright pages in tight binding, DJ spine sunned, less than quarter inch tear to front DJ-top edge, very mild rubbing to rear DJ-top edge, very gentle rubbing to DJ spine head and foot, light soiling to DJ (mostly to rear DJ), exceedingly gentle rubbing to DJ corners, else Very Good(+) to Near Fine(-) in Very Good(+) DJ./very good +. Large octavo in white DJ, blue color illus to front DJ and spine, ix, 462 pages, b&w illustrations, map, 25 cm.

Stapled paper packet of book emails included. DJ protected in archival mylar sleeve. || This is a history and sociological study of Los Angeles. Davis looks at the city from two perspectives: that of the radical citizen who wants to grasp the totality of his city's life, and of the urban guerilla aching to see the whole thing blow. He believes that Los Angeles has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism. With an acute eye for the absurd, the unjust, and the dangerous, he evokes Los Angeles as "a real place with a rich concrete history and a vivid, recognizable everyday life, and a system of public transit to the urban sublime." Davis deals with real estate development, ethnic groups, home-owners' associations, youth gangs, and the police. His elegiac tale points to a future in which the sublime and the dreadful are inextricable. -Publisher. Haymarket series. Real estate development -- California -- Los Angeles.