Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties is a movement history by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener published in April 2020. The authors combine archival research and personal interviews with their own experiences in the civil rights and anti-war movements to tell the story of this transformative decade. The book's purpose is not to present a comprehensive history of 1960s Los Angeles but to dispel the mythology surrounding this era and replace it with the neglected history of the populist social and cultural movements that shifted power away from an entrenched elite and opened up opportunities for radical egalitarian change.
Book Jacket
Angela Davis at UCLA (October 1969) to give her first lecture.
Police violence during the Watts Uprising (August 1965)
Father William DuBay (1968)
Michael Ryan Davis was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He was best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books were Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism.
Mike Davis (scholar)
Mike Davis, left, in his childhood
Mike Davis with his father Dwight Davis in front of the café at Shelter Valley, 1952.
Mike Davis, right, with Levi Kingston in Los Angeles.