Mike Davis, 76, died on Tuesday. In his book “City of Quartz,” he accused politicians of working with real estate developers to the detriment of the city, the working class, and people of color.
Mike Davis, a Nation contributing editor, teaches in the creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of many books, including Prisoners of the American Dream, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear and Planet of Slums.
Author, activist and self-defined “Marxist environmentalist” Mike Davis has died at 76. Davis died Tuesday after a long battle with esophageal cancer according to his friend Jon Wiener. Davis' greatest fears drove him to anticipate riots, fires and disease in such bestsellers as “City of Quartz” and “The Ecology of Fear.” Published in 1990, “City of Quartz” portrayed Los Angeles as a “carceral” society overseen by an oppressive police force. The police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the riots following the 1992 acquittal of his attackers made his book seem like prophecy.