Preview

Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power—where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.

With "Set the Night on Fire," Mike Davis and Jon Wiener have written the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors’ storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis’s award-winning L.A. history, "City of Quartz," "Set the Night on Fire" is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.

Join Prospect editor at large Harold Meyerson (a child of both L.A. and the sixties) in conversation with Wiener and Davis on the 55th anniversary of the Watts uprising, as they discuss this timeless narrative and its lessons for the social justice movements of today.