A magisterial, kaleidoscopic, riveting history of Los Angeles in
the Sixties
Histories of the sixties in the United States invariably overlook
Southern California, but Los Angeles was the epicenter of that
decade’s political and social earthquake. L.A. was a launchpad for
Black Power—where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to
prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home
to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the
birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity, a locus
of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s
movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.
Mike Davis and Jon
Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in
the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of
interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors’ storied
personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis’s
award-winning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night
on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating
and fiercely beautiful prose.
