Rating: 
Summary: The accuracy of the book seems suspect
Review: There seems to be a lot of controversy over the truthfulness of this book. I always say, let's stick to the facts.The Coagula Art Journal published an excellent article on this book, which analyzes the facts that Davis presents to bolster his arguments. The end result is that Davis is blown out of the water. His research seems shoddy at best, and willfully inaccurate in large part....
Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe the hype
Review: I find the negative reactions to Mike Davis' book very interesting, since they're predicted by the very model of reactionary short-sightedness that Davis suggests is one of the reasons why LA has got itself into the state that it's in. Davis' picture of a city in which the rich wield most of the power and the poor are regularly forgotten, marginalised and sacrificed to the needs of wealth is hardly a commie fantasy. That's how you make big cities! Face the facts, people! It's been happening in my own city, Dublin, albeit on a smaller scale, for the last ten years. I too lived in an under-maintenanced firetrap which ended up being burned out. I too have witnessed the construction of mass housing with severely under-code safety features bolted on in the name of a quick profit. I don't know about the chapters about wildlife; we don't have anything nearly as lethal as cougars and rattlesnakes in Ireland. But, at the very least, the chapter on the role that LA plays in the cultural imagination as a sort of modern-day Sodom ripe for armageddon is worth the price of the whole book. This is not, in the end, a book about LA in particular, although it's full of fascinating material. It's about blindness, paranoia, greed and inhumanity. As such, it's accurate about any First World city. The one-star reviewers are simply behaving like some of the characters in this book. (I wonder, sometimes, if non-Angelenos have any idea just what the rest of the world actually thinks about their city, and how weird and hallucinatorily awful we find it when we go there.) According to the sources Davis cites, LA is due for a seriously major quake some time in the next quarter-century. I don't wish that on anyone, but I do hope that people can take the hint. In the meantime, the bad reaction is just the usual story - God forbid that anyone should suggest that the pursuit of the dollar is not the only value in the world. Davis has a sense of the worth of human life that puts him miles above his critics. This is a book that stops people like me from despairing entirely about America.
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Summary: New York could use a Mike Davis
Review: As a native New Yorker, I am very familiar with smug views of urban history, written by apologists for the economic elites. As every New Yorker "knows", the city was brought to near-ruin by an excess of genersosity towarda the poor and a general attitude of permissiveness. In this potted-plant view, New York was "saved" by the bankers who slashed city services and, ultimately, the law-and-order policies of Rudy Giuliani. Coveniently ignored is the damage done by policies and urban planning that assisted the city's corporate sector and its wealthiest citizens. New York needs its own Mike Davis, whose "The Ecology of Fear" demonstrates the disastrous impact of reactionary planning on Los Angeles. Davis deals with a wide range of subjects, from the fires in Malibu to mountain lion attacks. The common thread is the irresponsibility of the people who run the city. In all instances the governinment has chosen mindless privatization of the environment over the creation of a healthy public sphere, shown a lack of concern for the reality of Los Angeles's physical environment and catered to every whim of its wealthiest citizans. As was the case in New York, LA's leaders have circled the wagons and blamed everything on the illegal immigrants and the "underclass". Davis's adversaries have tried to piant him as some form of radical, pathological doomsayer. He occasionally exagerrates; the tornado problem probably is overblown. The real pathology belongs to those people who would build a home in the fire trap called Malibu, watch their houses burn regularly and then scream for federal assistance for rebuilding, while blaming mysterious left-wing arsonists. The current Ramparts division police scandal only underscores everything that Davis says. A police department that holds "shooting parties" when an officer kills a civilian and frames subjects can exist only when in a city where government abdicates its responsibility to its citizens. Nike Davis aptly describes such a city. New York may not be as bad, but I would love to see Davis turn his attentions there.
Rating:
Summary: DENIAL AIN'T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT!
Review: I don't live in Lost Angeles, but I've been there enough times to realize that Davis is, if anything, WAY too charitable in his anyalisis of LA! To me, LA is the ultimite example of why I identify with those who'd burn every Amerikkkan flag---this country is pure HELL ON EARTH---and to those who'd disagree, I say this: denial ain't just a river in Egypt!
Rating: 
Summary: An urban researcher
Review: The central theme of Ecology of Fear is the different ways disasters in Los Angeles have been understood, perceived, forgotten, fantasized, and feared. Mike Davis begins with a scientific account of seismic, storm, flood, and fire hazard dynamics (Chapter 1), rehearses the evolution of the built environment against proposals that would have involved designing with rather than against nature (Chapter 2), narrates fire hazard policies that are as irrational as they are unfair (Chapter 3), demonstrates the role of disaster amnesia in the history of extreme storm events (Chapter 4), identifies the role of hazard hysteria in understanding animal behavior on the wild edge of LA (Chapter 5), postulates the role of anxiety and hysteria in accounting for the disaster theme in literature and films about Los Angeles (Chapter 6), and proposes a spatial model of the ecology of fear in greater LA (Chapter 7). The book is a continuation and elaboration of the 'mental geographies' of Los Angeles Davis offered in his majestic City of Quartz published eight years earlier. Now he is concerned with how extreme environmental and social events figure in the Southern California landscape and in the contours of the consciousness of Southern Californians. I found Ecology of Fear compelling and coherent. My experience with Southern California, personal and professional, extends to just over a half century. For me, Davis comes closer to capturing the soul of Southern California', the corporeal and spiritual character of the place than any one that I have come across. Many readers may be put off by Davis's sensibility and would prefer 'a more balanced' account, not one so 'over the top' but what if LA as a place is an extreme eccentricity in terms of its cultural politics? For me the question is, does Davis's narrative style succeed in capturing in text a feeling for the uniqueness of the place, does it evoke the diverse images of the aspects of LA that he discusses? If reading Ecology of Fear 'pisses you off', perhaps you should be angry with the forces responsible for LA and not Davis. In the tradition of radical populism, Davis is one of the most original intellects writing in the USA today.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful and Worthy - Yet Flawed.
Review: This book is aimed at popular cultures, history buffs, and quasi-academics. Davis examines "Los Angeles as the magnet for the American apocalyptic imagination. . . . riot, fire, flood, earthquake," under the backdrop of an arena where "middle-class apprehensions about angry under-classes are exceeded only by the anxieties brought by blind thrust-faults underlying Downtown L.A." It examines public and governmental risk perceptions, planning issues, historical events, and media and movie treatments of the "City of Angels as a theme park for Armageddon." Statistical and anecdotal treatments are constructed for everything from Mountain Lion predation on joggers, El Niño-driven floods and mudslides, California as the disembarking point of 'alien' invasions (including people's varying identifications of such to include Mexicans, Orientals, Medflies and extra-terrestrials), as well as "LA's under-rated tornado problem." While the book is insightful in examining the psyche of the American suburbanite in the context of the mystique of nature -- and how risk is exacerbated in the mindset of such cultures -- it is at best a reactionary effort. To note - It is highly likely that there were more tornado deaths in Oklahoma City last year than there were tornadoes in all of Southern California. The book appears well-researched, at least in terms of attempted effort. For instance, Chapter 4: "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn" is a holistic and comprehensive treatment of the wildfire hazard. But, other topical treatments are curiously hypocritical in their examination of certain real -- but low-probability risks -- such as cougars or tornadoes. What appears as a scholarly chapter on Southern California tornado risk is itself a yellow journalistic media-style protrayal of the seemingly sudden realization that tornadoes do in fact occur in virtually all of North America, including California. Davis sermonizes a bit on how economically-driven Southern California has committed numerous and regular environmental transgressions, social injustices, and planning blunders (and makes some great observations). However, his interpretation of pure natural hazards -- most notably tornadoes -- reduces this otherwise fascinating book to a parody of itself - and the fallacies of public risk perception that it seeks to address. "Ecology of Fear" consults all the right scientists and cites all the prime literature (e.g. Court, 1980; Hales, 1985; Grazulis, 1993; Monteverdi, 1996 on tornadoes), yet mostly makes all the wrong conclusions (at least about tornadoes). Labelling Southern California "Our Secret Kansas" is indicative of Davis' obsession with statistical oddities: "The Oklahoma City metropolitan area, considered to have the U.S.' worst urban tornado problem, is hit every 4.0 years. Yet metropolitan Los Angeles is hit at an average of once every 2.2 years, or twice as often." Aside from problems of scale, and a failure to qualify what an "urban tornado problem" is, Davis simply looks at quantitative data with little apparent understanding of the qualitative meaning. He fails to note that tornadoes in California tend to be weak, with NO violent tornado having EVER been recorded in the history of the state! Likewise, California tornadoes are very brief, relative to their Oklahoma cousins and, most importantly, no one has EVER been killed by a tornado in California. The chapter title is somewhat jingoistic as well, as even in Kansas the tornado risk is generally exaggerated by the media. Comparisons of the two states may not quite be like comparing 'apples and oranges,' but is certainly akin to 'oranges and grapefruits.' There may be some similarities, but the key thing is the differences, such as SIZE and impact! Still, I like the text and it all makes for a very interesting study of hazard perception, media and cultural constructs, and overall representations of the environment. It is a thought-provoking book, fascinating on differing levels -- such as the wide range of material covered, the inclusions and exclusions, and simply in considerations of why the book is so popular. All make for a great study in hazard perceptions and culture. While I am very critical of a few areas, I applaud the effort and Davis' concept of examining the "ecology of fear."
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Summary: False Accusations
Review: The claims that Davis fabricated evidence is generally untrue- critics sight the New York Times as catching Davis in plagiarism. However, an extensive search of the Times archives revealed only this statement by Todd S. Purdum :"Despite his own pronounced gift for original phrase making, he also has an annoying habit of expropriating the piquant observations of others in quotation marks without attribution in the text, though the book has meticulous footnotes and a thorough index." Yes, Davis has a propensity for blending the streetwise with academia in his language, but this work is thought provoking and engaging nonetheless.
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Summary: For those not in denial, this book presents a warning
Review: I've read all the 1-star reviews of this book and really have to laugh - nobody has cited or documented any of the so-called "fictional" aspects of this book. Clearly, there's a lot of denial going on here, amply demonstrated by the adolescent name-calling. This book paints a vivid picture of what's in store for much of this nation if we continue to ignore the obvious. We've got to begin to do a better job of balancing economic and ecological concerns. The history of LA is characterized by practically unchecked growth and an almost exclusive concern with not impeding the ability of developers, real estate magnates, builders, and other business people to make as much money as possible. There's nothing wrong with people making money, but there has to be balance! I think it's too late for LA and other areas of CA like Silicon Valley - the "quality of life" there is abominable. But it's not too late for the rest of the country. Will we wake up? Or will we just call people like Davis names and go on doing what we've been doing for centuries, no matter what the cost to our children and grandchildren.
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Summary: If Fontana's not LA, neither is Malibu.
Review: After reading the numerous attacks on this book in our local LA media (mostly in the New Times, a local paper desperate to establish itself as the screaming tabloid alternative to the L.A. Weekly), I was fearful that upon finally buying this book (yes, I had to wait for paperback) I would find it to be just a compendium of outlandish claims and apocalypse hysteria. This is not the case at all. I read the book, then went back and read the criticism, and I was disturbed to find that few critics actually refute any of the ideas in the book. Most of the comments on this page, for instance, boil down to "I heard he made it up" or "I heard he's a commie" or "LA's not as bad as he says." Davis never says, "We're all going to be eaten by mountain lions." He never says, "We're all going to be carried off by twisters." These are brought up as part of a larger argument about a metropolis that ignores its own place in the environment of Southern California. And Bunker Hill may be lovely, but it is indeed a very privatized space. Take a walk around the downtown highrises, and you will see plaques on the sidewalks which read: PRIVATE PROPERTY. The area is not a gated community; you won't see soldiers marching through on patrol; but why are there no homeless panhandling among the sculptures and fountains? After all, there's plenty of that going on down the hill on Spring street. Could it be that the plazas of Bunker Hill are not truly public? And what's with the bashing of his Westlake chapter? I never thought I'd see so many people come out in defense of slumlords.
Rating:
Summary: Biased? Yes, but contains simple, devastating truths.
Review: Point One - if Davis did indeed fudge his research, invent stories or fabricate evidence, then he's broken the ethical and intellectual standards by which historians are constrained. If such accusations are true, then let him drain the poisoned cup he mixed for himself. To be fair to the author, I spent a few hours in the library checking his footnotes. No, I didn't have time to review the whole book, since I do aspire to something of a life beyond the stacks; however, I didn't find anything unsupported by the sources cited. If anyone is inclined to respond to this post, could you please point out just where he lied? I'd appreciate your insights, since I didn't unearth falsification myself. Point Two - the moral of the story is simple, and one that no ad hominem attack (Communist! Socialist! Liberal! Leftist! Phony!), however venomous, can weaken. The moral has nothing to do, in fact, with Davis' obvious leftist leanings. Los Angeles today, more than any other single location in the developed world, represents a nearly total disconnection between what people imagine their lives to be and what physical reality is. If you wracked your brain for weeks, you couldn't come up with a worse place for millions to live. A semi-desert to begin with, the city depends on the vagaries of the Sierra snowpack and the flow of the notoriously capricious Colorado, among other rivers. LA sits in the middle of one of the most seismically active regions on the planet. Toss in a continual, interlocking cycle of horrendous wildfires, torrential rains, flash floods and mudslides for good measure. The result is a violently dynamic land, subject to sudden change. Yet the detachment of the good burghers of Malibu from their surroundings is such that they demand fire protection for each and every inaccessible house sited in tinderbox terrain while refusing to pay for improved water lines or widened streets. Willful ignorance of the geophysical facts of life prevails in Thousands Oaks as well, and in Orange County, and throughout the region. There's a handy English word for this kind of behavior - stupidity. What this book does, and does superbly, is reflect the undying human desire to make uncomfortable facts vanish by fervently pretending that they do not exist.
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