Mike Davis

About the author

Mike Davis (1946–2022) was an American Marxist historian, urban theorist, and public intellectual whose work made him one of the most distinctive voices in Southern California's intellectual life. Raised in Fontana, he left school at 16 to support his family, later earning a scholarship to Reed College before spending a decade as a truck driver and left-wing organizer. Returning to academia on a union scholarship, he became best known for City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts, which linked political economy to social crisis.

He taught as Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UC Riverside and won the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2007.