Examining a series of El Ni�o-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global clima...

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off stree...

A global guidebook to the "utopias" being constructed—in cities, deserts, and on islands—in a capitalist era unfettered by union and state regulations.A New York Times Art and Architecture Critic's PickAlthough they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery existed until very recently, a gilded archipelago of private islands known as "The World...

Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares. Although they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery e...

According to the united nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, and even from economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world ec...

For the late great Mike Davis, the ravaging of the climate by capital—and his prescient analysis of its consequences for those of us left to deal with the resulting crises—was always a central part of his urban geography.In these wide ranging, incisive, and hauntingly relevant essays, Davis asks us to consider what we would find if we put a microscope to the ruins of Metropolis, and provides a riveting account of the disasters—natural, man-made, and those (as in the...

From Coconut Trees To Cults offers a critical examination of the evolution of religion from a skeptical viewpoint, arguing that religious beliefs and practices are primarily human constructs shaped by psychological, social, and environmental factors rather than divine influence. The author explores the cognitive foundation of religion, suggesting that human brains are wired to seek patterns and assign meaning, leading to the emergence of supernatural beliefs as coping mechanisms for uncert...

Old Gods, New Enigmas is the highly-anticipated book by the best-selling author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums. Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler before his profile as one of the world's leading urbanists emerged with the publication of his sober, if dystopian survey of Los Angeles. Since then, he's developed a reputation not only for his caustic analysis of ecological catastrophe and colonial h...

On a September day in 1920, an angry Italian anarchist named Mario Buda exploded a horse-drawn wagon filled with dynamite and iron scrap near New York's Wall Street, killing 40 people. Since Buda's prototype the car bomb has evolved into a "poor man's air force," a generic weapon of mass destruction that now craters cities from Bombay to Oklahoma City.In this provocative history, Mike Davis traces the its worldwide use and development, in the process exposing the role of state inte...

In his book, The Monster at Our Door, the renowned activist and author Mike Davis warned of a coming global threat of viral catastrophes. Now in this expanded edition of that 2005 book, Davis explains how the problems he warned of remain, and he sets the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of previous disastrous outbreaks, notably the 1918 influenza disaster that killed at least forty million people in three months and the Avian flu of a decade and a half ago.In language both...

A powerful glimpse into the history of disaster in Los Angeles, both real or those imagined in movies and books."If Davis takes a darkling view of the California dream, there is nothing dim or dull about his book. His great strengths are a vigorous prose style . . . a provocative thesis . . . and a dizzying catalog of delicious, and sometimes frightening, facts." — The New York TimesLos Angeles has become a magnet ...

This book offers practical, affordable process improvement strategies tailored specifically for small businesses. It emphasizes that people are the heart of any successful operation and explains how focusing on value-added activities can transform your business into a lean, agile, and customer-responsive enterprise. Without burdening you with costly or complex systems, this guide states that the "magic potion" to streamline processes, boost efficiency, and drive growth is something called ...