In Praise of Barbarians

The social critic and Set the Night on Fire co-author tackles the fashion for empires and white men’s burdens in this 2007 collection of radical essays.

With In Praise of Barbarians, Mike Davis 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.

Praise for Mike Davis

“Davis remains our penman of lost souls and lost scenarios: He culls nuggets of avarice and depredation the way miners chisel coal.” —The Nation

“A rare combination of an author, Rachel Carson and Upton Sinclair all in one.” —Susan Faludi, author of Backlash

“Davis’ work is the cruel and perpetual folly of the ruling elites.” —New York Times