In Praise of Barbarians : Essays Against Empire

by Davis, Mike

• ISBN13: 9781931859424
• ISBN10: 1931859426
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-01
• Publisher: Haymarket Books

Summary

The author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums attacks the current fashion for empires and white men's burdens in this blistering collection of radical essays. He skewers contemporary idols such as Mel Gibson, Niall Ferguson, and Howard Dean; unlocks some secret doors in the Pentagon and the California prison system; visits Star Wars in the Arctic and vigilantes on the border; predicts ethnic cleansing in New Orleans more than a year before Katrina; recalls the anarchist avengers of the 1890s and "teeny-bopper" riots on the Sunset Strip in the 1960s; discusses the moral bankruptcy of the Democrats in Kansas and West Virginia; remembers "Private Ivan," who defeated fascism; and looks at the future of capitalism from the top of Hubbert's Peak. No writer in the United States today brings together analysis and history as comprehensively and elegantly as Mike Davis. In these contemporary, interventionist essays, Davis goes beyond critique to offer real solutions and concrete possibilities for change. Mike Davis is the author many books, including City of Quartz, The Ecology of Fear, The Monster at Our Door, and Planet of Slums. Davis teaches in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine, and lives in San Diego.

Table of Contents

The End of American Exceptionalism	p. 11
Great and Glorious Days	p. 16
Occupied America	p. 22
Vermont's Pied Piper	p. 27
The Anti-Bush Cometh	p. 31
Jumping Off the Bandwagon	p. 35
Oedipus Bush	p. 38
What's the Matter with America?	p. 42
The Democrats After November	p. 61
Bush's Ultimate Thule?	p. 91
The Scalping Party	p. 97
The Ungrateful Volcano	p. 103
War-Mart	p. 112
The Pentagon as Global Slumlord	p. 118
The Urbanization of Empire	p. 122
Heavy Metal Freeway	p. 135
Cry California	p. 140
Think Big: Recall the System	p. 146
The Day of the Locust	p. 151
Striking Southern California	p. 156
Mel's Nazi Matinee	p. 160
Inside the Sunshine Gulag	p. 163
Riotous Real Estate	p. 167
The Great Wall of Capital	p. 172
Vigilante Man	p. 177
Border Invasion	p. 182
Arnie Reprogrammed	p. 188
Our Summer Vacation: 50,000 Dead	p. 197
The View from Hubbert's Peak	p. 200
The Monster at the Door	p. 204
Poor, Black, and Left Behind	p. 208
A Rainy Day in Tijuana	p. 212
Drowning All Illusions	p. 215
At the Corner of New Orleans and Humanity	p. ä
Sister Catarina	p. 256
Artisans of Terror	p. 263
Street Iliad	p. 278
Saving Private Ivan	p. 283
The Ghost Shirts	p. 287
Malcolm - More Than Ever	p. 291
Punch-Out Time	p. 295
Happy Birthday, Big Bill	p. 301
Radical Grit	p. 305
Riot Nights on Sunset Strip	p. 312
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.