Davis begins our apocalyptically inflected tour with a trip to New York's Ground Zero. He then takes us to "German Village, " a Utah wasteland that was once a test site for Allied science advisors to rehearse the perfect plan for destroying Berlin, and to the diabolic miracle of Las Vegas, where environmental terrorism is practiced in the name of urban development. Davis also hits Los Angeles, the frontline of the "Second Civil War" sparked by American apartheid, and which lies waiting to be ignited in cities across the country.
With wit, compassion, and an eye for the absurd and the unjust, Mike Davis has begun a long overdue dialogue on urban science in this prophetic new book.