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Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties
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About This Book
A magisterial, kaleidoscopic, riveting history of Los Angeles in the SixtiesHistories of the US Sixties invariably focus on New York City, but Los Angeles was an epicenter of that decade's political and social earthquake. LA was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation--and home to the Chicano walkouts and Moratorium, as well as birthplace of "Asian America" as a political identity, base of the antiwar movement, and of course, center of California counterculture.Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive history of LA in the Sixties, drawing on extensive archival research, scores of interviews with principal figures of the 1960s movements, and personal histories (both Davis and Wiener are native Los Angelenos). Following on from Davis's award-winning LA history, City of Quartz, and picking up where the celebrated California historian Kevin Starr left off (his eight-volume history of California ends in 1963), Set the Night on Fire is a fascinating historical corrective, delivered in scintillating and fiercely elegant prose.
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"One of the major contributions of Set the Night on Fire is the linkage of what have often been viewed as separate events, including the so-called 'Blowouts,' politically inspired secondary-school walkouts that originated among Latino students but soon became multiracial; anti–Vietnam War protests that moved beyond white constituencies to engage Angelenos of color; and black cultural articulations that attracted white leftist support."
"The 60s depicted here depart from the 'standard narrative' of the decade that has emerged even on the left, in which university students, predominantly white and middle class, were 'the principal social actors', and protest radiated out from a few large and storied campuses ..."
"StNoF is especially good at showing how LA acted as a receiver and transmitter of emancipatory waves, joining in, then leading, as the need arose ..."
"resistance, illuminating those who often took life-risking steps to expose injustice ..."
"But for the most part, this is a stunning history of a defining time in L.A."
"That gives reason for hope and as Set the Night on Fire makes clear, hope has always been Leviathan's great antagonist."
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