{"product_id":"set-the-night-on-fire-isbn-9781839761225","title":"Set the Night on Fire","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Bestseller\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThis riveting tour through 1960s Los Angeles is a “history from below, in the very best sense” as it celebrates the “grassroots heroes and struggles” of the social movements of the era (Barbara Ehrenreich, author of \u003ci\u003eNatural Causes\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Authoritative and impressive.” —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Monumental.” —\u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city 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. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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, \u003ci\u003eCity of Quartz\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.“The familiar, monochromatic picture of Los Angeles in the sixties—all Hollywood pop and Didion ennui—required a million people of African, Asian, and Mexican ancestry to be ‘edited out of utopia,’ as Mike Davis and Jon Wiener put it. What those people actually did, alongside antiwar feminists, high school students, and others, is the heart of this book, and it’s a big heart. No one could tell these intersecting stories better than Davis and Wiener, and their book gives us back a great city’s greatness in its movements, edges, and other centers, so many of them forgotten.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Rebecca Solnit, author of \u003ci\u003eRecollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“From the Ash Grove to Aztlán, from the Valley to Vietnam, it’s all here. Step inside and meet an amazing array of characters who risked life and limb to drag the City of Angels out of the dark ages. In showing how struggles for free health care, adequate housing, functional schools, racial and sexual liberation, new forms of creative expression, and the human right of freedom from brutal police violence came together into a mighty torrent, Wiener and Davis have written a revolutionary history for an age of continuing contradictions.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Daniel Widener, author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Davis’s and Wiener’s L.A. is not the glossy theme park of mansions, beaches, and glitzed-up noir, but the undercity of outsiders struggling to get out from under the savage police to stake out a place in the sun. Their book is a rare and necessary saga of unsung heroes, vicious authorities, and unpunished crimes—a timely reminder of opportunities seized and opportunities wasted.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Todd Gitlin, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is history from below, in the very best sense, focusing on grassroots heroes and struggles. A magnificent mural of the local Sixties, written with verve and passion by two of my favorite locals.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e— Barbara Ehrenreich, author of \u003ci\u003eNatural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The great task of \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is to remedy the erasures of the black, brown and queer activists who put their bodies on the line. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener remind us that what there is of progressivism in the city today (we can debate how much) has a very deep history of struggle against unforgiving reactionary forces. Revolutionary artist-nuns, educator-organizers and free-jazz visionaries are just a few of a vast cast of characters that together paint a stirring portrait of a visionary Los Angeles ever-emerging from the shadows of the old order. It’s high time radical LA came out of the closet. This book blows the door wide open. Viva Los Angeles Libre!”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Rubén Martínez, author of \u003ci\u003eDesert America: A Journey Across Our Most Divided Landscape\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e fixes on one mission—collate the stories of emancipation struggle in ’60s LA—and runs with it, using document research to complete the job. This is the approach Davis has been using in the twenty-first century, and it works.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Sasha Frere-Jones, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “An indispensable portrait of an unexplored chapter in the history of American progressivism.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Insightful and innovative … \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire \u003c\/i\u003eis both a fierce political and cultural history and a geographic corrective.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—William Deverell, \u003ci\u003eAlta\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Authoritative and impressive … \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is an essential reference to L.A.’s rich history of civil unrest, with a hopeful undercurrent. Movements can and often do force change.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Erik Himmelsbach-Weinstein, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Combining comprehensive, mineshaft-deep research with unique firsthand knowledge, [Davis and Wiener’s] recounting of the radical ’60s in Los Angeles will likely not be surpassed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jerald Podair, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A book as vast as the city itself.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Ron Jacobs, \u003ci\u003eCounterPunch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Monumental … For new generations growing up in a city whose very history is rarely acknowledged to exist, \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is a vital primer in resistance, a gift to the future from the past.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Ben Ehrenreich, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “These are war stories, the intended audience of which is the young organizers of today, many of them the children and grandchildren of his friends and heroes in the sixties.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dana Goodyear, \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Anyone familiar with Mike Davis’s magisterial social history of Los Angeles, \u003ci\u003eCity of Quartz\u003c\/i\u003e, will know what to expect in terms of the epic sweep and questioning tone of \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e. This time, the focus is firmly on race and rebellion, but he and Wiener also map out the myriad protest movements, countercultural voices and campaigns that made 1960s Los Angeles an altogether more edgy and volatile city than the state’s hippy capital, San Francisco.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Sean O’Hagan, \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Davis and Wiener have crafted a book that is both encyclopedic and prophetic, scholarly and polemical … Readers would be hard-pressed to find better guides for a tour of leftist Los Angeles.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Sean Dempsey, S.J., \u003ci\u003eAmerica magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This huge and exhilarating work of history aims to restore some depth and accuracy to how we talk about Los Angeles in the 1960s … Davis and Wiener have created an important book to read in a time where LA needs more than ever to be mobilized.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—John Freeman, \u003ci\u003eLit Hub\u003c\/i\u003e (“Most Anticipated Books of 2020”)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A richly detailed portrait of a city that seethed with rebellious energy.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This very readable but meticulously detailed year-by-year account has relevance far beyond its time and place. The sixties were a decade that shaped politics for half a century and the authors show how different struggles were interlinked across the US.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Glyn Robbins, \u003ci\u003eMorning Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “An essential rescued history.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Journal of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Mike Davis and Jon Wiener tell the story of a decade of explosions.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Meagan Day, \u003ci\u003eJacobin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “In \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e, Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide an extensive history of L.A. that includes interviews with key players from these movements and their own personal recollections.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Danielle Bauter, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Highly readable … Davis and Wiener succeed in giving renewed attention to the neglected voices of subjugated minorities central to the reconstruction of society.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLSE Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “An astonishing book that proves that people really do have the power to force change for the better.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBuzz Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An exhaustive and in-depth presentation of the wide-ranging big and small resistance movements of [the sixties] with a sober and insightful account of their strengths and weaknesses, including the role that the political left played in them. Its publication in 2020 could not be more timely in these days when tens of thousands have been demonstrating in Los Angeles and across the country and world against police brutality and racism.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Samuel Farber, \u003ci\u003eJacobin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A remarkably well-researched volume, which chronologically itemises each and every twist and turn in the muddled patchwork of American history.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKCW London\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A history of the social and political struggles of the 1960s unlike most others.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe VVA Veteran\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Monumental … \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is, above all, a historical account of how a rainbow of insurgent social movements tried to peel back the glitter, dismantle the police state, and replace elite white rule and its regimes of segregation, militarism, patriarchy, and conformity with a society oriented toward ‘serving the people.’”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Robin D.G. Kelley, \u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Two veteran authors allow themselves vast detail to tell us about the cradle of counterculture, in all the far-flung rebellious meanings of the term. It is also the story of L.A.’s contested racial space, with contradictions ranging from radicalized white youngsters in the suburban sprawl to Chicano Teamsters breaking strikes.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Paul Buhle, \u003ci\u003eRain Taxi\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is a sort of bequeathal from one generation of activists to another.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMother Jones\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Timely … We can do more than repeat the past; we can also learn from it. That gives reason for hope and as \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e makes clear, hope has always been Leviathan’s great antagonist.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “An invigorating and inspiring read.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMorning Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelatory history of Los Angeles in the 1960s, undermining pervasive media myths of the era.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Alex Ross, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A page-turning survey of social movement activism in 1960s Los Angeles … \u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is a serious, informative book that is also a pleasurable, fun, and inspiring read.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Andrew S. Baer, \u003ci\u003eCriminal Law and Criminal Justice Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Essential and long overdue.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—David Ulin, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e (“Best California books of 2020”)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “An invigorating and inspiring read.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMorning Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A sweeping portrait of a city in upheaval in the 1960s … Davis and Wiener clearly see their book as a means of heartening today’s activists in LA and beyond, just as the activists in the generations after the ’60s took the examples of these struggles as inspiration for their own fights.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Micah Uetricht, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Documents a whole world of interconnected, often forgotten rebellions … like many veteran leftists, Davis and Wiener are good at pointing out forgotten victories as well as dissecting defeats.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Andy Beckett, \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e aims to dislodge the popular conception of sixties radicalism as the terrain of white Berkeley hippies and New Left agitators. Instead, Blacks, Latinos, high-school students, and unreconstructed communists were at the center of the city’s struggles against segregation and police impunity.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—John Thomason, \u003ci\u003eCommonweal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An epic history of protest in Los Angeles. You can read just a single chapter from each and be transported between so many places.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eSamira Ahmed, \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is a truly monumental achievement by Davis and Wiener and it is unlikely it will ever be surpassed as a multifaceted account of LA at this time.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eCounterfire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[\u003ci\u003eSet the Night on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e] is remarkable for the scope and depth of its histories and the range of sources on which they are based … [It] contains many untold stories that no doubt will inspire young scholars to study further.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Magally A. Miranda Alcázar, \u003ci\u003eAztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMike Davis\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eCity of Quartz, Late Victorian Holocausts, Buda’s Wagon, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Planet of Slums\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in San Diego.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJon Wiener \u003c\/b\u003eis a longtime Contributing Editor at the\u003ci\u003e Nation \u003c\/i\u003eand host and producer of Start Making Sense, the magazine’s weekly podcast. He is an Emeritus Professor of U.S. history at UC Irvine, and his books include \u003ci\u003eGimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eHow We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in Los Angeles.","brand":"Verso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303260082405,"sku":"NP9781839761225","price":74.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781839761225.jpg?v=1767736381","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/set-the-night-on-fire-isbn-9781839761225","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}