Mike Davis Popular Books

Mike Davis Biography & Facts

Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He was best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books were Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022). Biography Early life: 1946–1964 Background and childhood Michael Ryan Davis was born in Fontana, California, on March 10, 1946, to Dwight and Mary (Ryan) Davis. Dwight was from Venedocia, Ohio, and was of Welsh and Protestant background. He was a trade-union Democrat and an "anti-racist," which Davis attributed to his ancestors, Welsh abolitionists and Union soldiers who had settled in the Black Swamp of Ohio. Mary was an Irish Catholic from Columbus, Ohio, and the daughter of Jack Ryan, a veteran of the Spanish–American War. Both parents hitchhiked to California during the Great Depression and came to the El Cajon Valley, but moved to Fontana for a brief period during the Second World War and after. Returning in 1953, Davis was raised in a tract home in the community of Bostonia in San Diego County. His father Dwight worked in the wholesale meat industry for the Superior Meat Company in downtown San Diego and was a member of the meat cutter's union, and his uncle ran a wholesale meat company. The nearly all-white neighborhood of Davis's childhood was populated by refugees of the Great Depression, mostly Southern Baptist families from Oklahoma and Texas, and had a country-western ballroom and rodeo. Davis identified with his community as a "redneck" and a "Westerner" in opposition to the "surfer" beach culture held by the wealthier, Methodist neighborhoods south of El Cajon's Main Street. Racism and anti-communism were endemic in the town, but Democrats held the dominant political role in the community due to the influence of the Machinists Union. Dwight Davis was an amateur geologist, and would bring the young Davis with him on frequent excursions in the Colorado Desert to search for uranium deposits, abandoned mines, geodes, and petrified wood. The favorite stop in the desert for the two was the Ocotillo Wells gas station and café, owned by an eccentric elderly proprietor who would debate baseball with Dwight. In 1955, the young Davis was curious about several photos of cadavers taken by the proprietor and posted on the bulletin board in the café. The proprietor explained to Davis that the bodies were of young Mexican men, all executed in arroyos along the border by being shot in the back. Davis remained haunted by the photos of the corpses, and the experience would influence his ideas on the border for the rest of his life. Davis described the family home as absent of books save for the Vulgate Bible, but his parents were avid readers of newspapers and the Reader's Digest. The family were some of the only Catholics in the neighborhood, and the young Davis often found himself in fistfights with his fundamentalist neighbors, which contributed to him renouncing religion at the age of 10 and gravitating towards science with the advent of Sputnik. Davis was a patriotic and conservative pre-adolescent, enlisting in the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton's "Devil Pups" program, and until he was 15, had a picture of Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb" on his wall. Davis's patriotic phase was eroded by the dysfunction in his suburban Bostonia. At 12, Davis witnessed the aftermath of the Pendergast murders near his home, where 5 members of a family, including 4 children, were murdered by Carl Eder. Davis recalled the scene as if "...somebody had taken a bucket of red paint and thrown it on the walls." Davis also faced difficulties with a childhood bully in his neighborhood, Gordon Neumann, who was hostile to children, and would later go on to shoot six, killing one of them, and then killing a woman before burning himself to death in 1993. Neumann, who was much older, had previously attacked Davis in second grade, but he was rescued by his father who "almost killed" Neumann. Domestic violence was present in the community but never discussed, and he recalled hearing women and children being frequently beaten while in his backyard in the evenings. Teenage years In high school, Davis became interested in history from the stories of his teachers, who were World War II veterans. He was eventually exposed to John Hersey's Hiroshima, a reading which challenged all of his ideas on patriotism and the United States. At 16, his father suffered a catastrophic heart attack which undermined the family's financial security. Davis had to leave school to provide for the family by working as a delivery truck driver for his uncle's wholesale meat company, delivering to restaurants throughout San Diego County. After his father's heart attack, Davis entered a brooding and troubled period, and was mostly interested in drag racing, Kerouac, and taking bullfighting classes. Davis drank, raced, and stole cars with his friends, which culminated in a near-fatal car accident when he drove his Ford into a brick wall during a drag race, leaving him with a permanent 12 in (30 cm) scar on his left thigh. Concurrently, while delivering to restaurants across San Diego's East County, he met Lee Gregovich, an older communist and Wobbly whose family emigrated from the Dalmatian coast to work in the copper mines of the American southwest. Gregovich was blacklisted from many employers by the HUAC, but had found a job as a cook at the Chicken Shack, an old-style roadhouse in Julian. The Chicken Shack was the most distant customer Davis delivered to, leading to a weekly ritual: after Davis put the order in the walk-in, Gregovich would provide Davis with red wine and the two would talk. At the end of every discussion, Gregovich urged the young Davis to "read Marx!" The "alcoholic, delinquent, and suicidal" Davis was then invited to a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) demonstration at the Bank of America in downtown San Diego at the behest of his cousin, who had married the Black civil rights activist Jim Stone. The group was doused in lighter fluid and threatened with ignition by a group of sailors, before members of the Nation of Islam rescued them from the fray. Davis described the 1962 demonstration as his "burning bush moment." Under the guidance of Stone, Davis returned to high school and began working at the San Diego chapter of CORE, to commendation from Gregovich. Davis graduated as one of three valedictorians of El Cajon Valley High, and earned a full scholarship to Reed College. Young activist: 1964–1968 New York and Oakland At Reed College, Davis was overwhelmed, alienated by the hippy culture and struggling academically. He joined the Portland, Oregon chapter of CORE, which included the labor historian Jer.... Discover the Mike Davis popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mike Davis books.