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Mike Davis

マイク・デイヴィス

Mike Davis

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
1946-03-10 （Fontana, California, U.S.）
Died
2022-10-25 （San Diego, California, U.S.） age 76
Nationality
United States
Languages
English
Religion
Catholic (raised), later secular/atheist
Residence History
San Diego (Bostonia), California, U.S. → Los Angeles, California, U.S. → New York City, U.S. → Austin, Texas, U.S. → London, United Kingdom (periods of residence) → Scotland (periods of residence)

Career

Occupations
writer, political activist, urban theorist, historian, professor, editor, journalist
Active Years
1964-2022
Affiliations
University of California, Riverside (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Creative Writing), Getty Research Institute (1996–1997 Getty Scholar), New Left Review (editor), University of California, Irvine (history department), Southern California Institute of Architecture (taught urban theory), Stony Brook University (taught)
Memberships
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Communist Party USA (Southern California district) — affiliated
Influenced By
Lewis Mumford, Herbert Marcuse, Karl Marx (intellectual influence), Garrett Eckbo (regionalism/architecture reference)

Education

Reed College
Period: 1964–1965（中退）
Country: United States
Expelled/left Reed College (intervisitation incident)
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Studied economics and history
Degree: BA, MA
Country: United States
Returned to college on a union scholarship; did not complete PhD program

Awards

Deutscher Memorial Prize
1991
Work: City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
Organization: Deutscher Memorial Prize
Result: 受賞
Getty Scholar
1996
Organization: Getty Research Institute
Result: 在籍/選出
MacArthur Fellowship
1998
Organization: MacArthur Foundation
Result: 受賞
World History Association Book Prize
2002
Work: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
Organization: World History Association
Result: 受賞
Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
2007
Organization: Lannan Foundation
Result: 受賞

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

1990 Nonfiction (urban studies / social history)

A historical and critical analysis of Los Angeles, exposing the political and economic forces shaping urban space, power, and social class.

urban power structuresclassurban development and repression

Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

2001 Nonfiction (environmental history / economic history)

Discusses how late 19th-century El Niño events combined with colonial policies to produce massive famines and their historical consequences.

climate and faminecolonialismeconomic history

Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

1998 Nonfiction (urban environmental studies)

An essayistic analysis of disaster narratives, risk perception, and media representations related to Los Angeles.

culture of disasterurban riskmedia representation

Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class

2006 Nonfiction (global urban studies)

Examines rapid urbanization, the growth of slums, and the informal economy globally, mapping structures of urban poverty.

global urbanizationslumsinformal economy

Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties

2020 Nonfiction (oral history / social history)

Chronicles cultural and political movements, race relations, and protest in 1960s Los Angeles through multiple testimonies (co-authored with Jon Wiener).

civil rightsanti-war movementcounterculture

The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism

2022 Nonfiction (pandemic history / political economy)

A recent work linking pandemics and public health crises to the conditions of capitalism; a collection of essays and reportage.

pandemicpublic healthcrises of capitalism

Bibliography

  • Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class (1986)
  • City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990)
  • Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (1998)
  • Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (2001)
  • Planet of Slums (2006)
  • Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties (2020, co-authored with Jon Wiener)
  • The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (2022)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
social-historical essaysinvestigative reportage styleMarxist analysisnarrative yet critical essay style
Recurring Motifs
urban catastrophe and crisisclass struggle and laborenvironmental degradation and climatecritique of neoliberalism

Health

  • Esophageal cancer
    2020–2022
    Diagnosed in 2020 and in terminal stage; died in 2022. The illness affected his activity but he continued to write and give interviews.

Legacy

Mike Davis was an internationally recognized commentator whose works connected urban studies, environmental history, and labor history to expose social injustices. Despite criticism, his incisive analyses and vivid prose left a wide influence in urban criticism and leftist discourse.

Academic Societies

  • World History Association (related)

Archives

  • Mike Davis Archive at marxists.org
  • Library of Congress (LCCN: n86144570)

Quotes

  • “I'm in the terminal stage of metastatic esophageal cancer but still up and around the house... If I have a regret, it's not dying in battle or at a barricade as I've always romantically imagined.”
    Source: Los Angeles Times (interview) (2022)

Trivia

  • Married five times (first four marriages ended in divorce)
  • Sustained a long scar on his left thigh from a near-fatal drag-racing car accident in his youth
  • Participated in anti-war activism in the 1960s, including burning his draft card
  • Dedicated his final book to Levi Kingston, a longtime friend and activist