In this month’s massive Los Angeles fires, so far 24 people have died, thousands of structures have been destroyed and approximately 16,308 hectares have been burned. The fires are already among the most destructive in California’s recorded history.
And as happens when major fires erupt in Los Angeles, radical (Marxist) urban historian Mike Davis’s 1998 book Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster is being shared. Specifically: its controversial third chapter, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.
Its publication sparked intense backlash. Certain journalists, a former real estate developer and a Malibu realtor masquerading as a neutral fact checker led attacks on Davis’ claims and character. Some minor errors (corrected in subsequent editions) were found in the book’s 831 footnotes.
