Mike Davis

Michael Ryan Davis was an American non-fiction writer, social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. Author of more than a dozen books, he is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.

Davis also wrote books about the politics of working-class people and the American dream; the dangers of a global flu pandemic; imperialism, drought, and famine in India; and the history of the car bomb. He won the Lannan Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2007.

Michael Ryan Davis was born in Fontana, California. He was raised in the Bostonia community in San Diego County. His Welsh father was a trade-union Democrat, and his Irish Catholic mother was the daughter of a Spanish–American War veteran. Grew up in a nearly all-white neighborhood, Davis identified as a "redneck" and a "Westerner." Despite his family's lack of books, Davis became interested in science and gave up religion at age 10.

Davis began his interest in history in high school, inspired by his World War II veteran teachers. After reading John Hersey's Hiroshima, he changed his attitude toward patriotism and the United States.

At 16, his father's heart attack led him to drop out of school and work as a delivery truck driver to support his family. He fell into a troubled period, engaging in drag racing and bullfighting while drinking and stealing cars with his friends.

However, his meeting with Lee Gregovich, a blacklisted communist who urged him to "read Marx," and his cousin's invitation to a Congress of Racial Equality demonstration changed his life. He returned to school and worked at the San Diego chapter of CORE, graduating as a valedictorian and receiving a full scholarship to Reed College.

At Reed, Davis struggled academically and then moved to New York City to join the national office of SDS. He returned to California, where he lived off selling radical literature and became familiar with Herbert Marcuse's work. Davis burned his draft card to protest Johnson's intervention in the Dominican Republic while in Oakland.

In 1965, Davis went to Los Angeles to help organize protests against building a freeway in a historically Black neighborhood. He worked with Levi Kingston, a former jazz bassist and radicalized sailor, to organize draft resistance and counseling.

During the Watts uprising in August 1965, Kingston was shot and Davis remained close friends with him until Kingston's death. In 1966, Davis debated Kirk Douglas on a talk show, impressing the audience with his articulate argument.

As a regional organizer for SDS in 1966, Davis helped organize protests against the Vietnam War and civil rights violations. In 1967, Davis briefly left LA to organize for SDS in Texas and approached a populist news editor about reviving the Populist Party. He left SDS after the 1969 "Days of Rage" with mixed feelings about the movement's accomplishments.

His breakthrough history of Los Angeles, City of Quartz, was widely credited with predicting the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles after Rodney King’s beating. In one of his most famous essays, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, he argued that it was delusional for Californians to build and rebuild luxury homes on land that was constantly afflicted by wildfires while failing to prevent deaths from human-made fires in lower-income immigrant neighborhoods.

Michael Davis was a Getty Scholar and MacArthur Fellow. He taught at various universities and wrote for prestigious publications, including The Nation and New Left Review.

Davis was a self-proclaimed international socialist and "Marxist-Environmentalist" who followed the likes of Mumford and Eckbo. He also authored two young adult fiction books: Land of the Lost Mammoths (2003) and Pirates, Bats, and Dragons (2004).

Michael Davis has battled esophageal cancer for five years. In his last months, after transitioning to palliative care, Davis gave a series of incisive interviews, outlining his fears about the failures of governments worldwide to confront the climate crisis.

Photo credit: Courtesy Verso Books