Rating: 
Summary: Kaleidoscopic, whirling, brilliant, disturbing.
Review: What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh, and Davis' new book shows the bones, the the sinew, and the exposed nerve endings of a southern California about to spin apart. With a polymath's range and a poet's intensity, Davis spins his thesis from strands of discarded history, cast off cultural artifacts, and rejected flotsam from the collective and ecological unconscious. If you live in southern California, you must read this book. If you don't want your region to become southern California, you must read it anyway. Devoid of pablum, eschewing a 'feel-good' Strangelovian approach, Ecology of Fear shows how we move into and make our own hell, and casts an unblinking eye on some nasty, nasty truths. If Harlan Ellison had politics, this work would be his.
Rating: 
Summary: The literary equivalent of Jerry Springer.
Review: If you enjoy talk TV, manufactured "facts," and hysterical arm-waving, then this book is for you. That Davis is a good writer, with a fine sense of style, doesn't make up for the book's short-comings (after all, Springer is an accomplished provocateur). Davis distorts or stretches facts, abuses statistics, and then warns of the dire consequences to us all. Unfortunately, this book cannot be trusted, and is about as useful to on-going discussions of public policy in Los Angeles as a supermarket tabloid. This is junk, masquerading as information. Other than that, a wonderful contribution to the literature of the "Big Orange."
Rating: 
Summary: EXCELLENT AND VERY TRUE.
Review: Frankly, I was waiting for someone to come out and say the weather here is lousy, the city is segregated and full of unfriendly and frightened people, and that L.A. is basically a dangerous place that is totally out of control. What 'Hollywood renaissance' was the first reviewer referring to? It is still a place I wouldn't visit after dark. And I've been through at least three tornadoes, including the one that hit Long Beach and washed away most of Huntingdon Beach this year. How soon some people forget. This book uses some hyperbole, sure, but there is a lot of truth here. It cuts throught the seventy years of hype that has painted a truly weird place as some sort of terrestrial Paradise. In reality it is a sort of island in a hostile sea. Though I don't really lose sleep over killer cougars. And yes, I am 'living' here, if you can call it that. The best part of this book, and the most damning, are the repeated instances where a voice of sanity--say, Olmstead Jr's-- is momentarily raised , proposing a moratorium on construction on marginal lands, only to be steamrollered by greedy developers. You can see what the results are. This book is an excellent read and well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Work of fiction posing posing as fact.
Review: Starting with the totally false dust cover claim that author Mike Davis was born in Los Angeles (he was actually born and raised in desert hamlets far from Los Angeles and never came to LA until adulthood), virtually every premise in the book is based on non-existant facts. The chapter on fires in the Westlake area says it has the highest urban fire incidence in the country, but the LA Fire Department confirms that the 1st council district has the LOWEST number of structure fires of the 15 council districts. In the tornado chapter, he claims LA is the city with the highest tornado incidence in the country, but he uses the figures for the entire state of California to make the false claim and even then those figures are greatly distorted. In the Blade Runner/Bunker Hill chapter he totally falsifies his own reserach as anyone who checks his footnotes can easily find out (but no one has ever done) and he then totally misrepresents the actual physical development of Bunker Hill (his steel doors shutting off all access to the bank buildings and the removal of all public sidewalks is not just partially incorrect, but 100% incorrect). Then there are the hundreds upon hundreds of totally false statements such as that Los Angeles had the richest farmland in the country (no authority cited), that CityWalk destroyed Holywood's redevelopment (Hollywood is undergoing it's biggest boom since the 1920's), and he then totally ignores how his predictions of LA's future in City Of Quartz were totally proved wrong by the dramatic drop in crime in LA, the equally dramtic drop in unemployment and creation of more truly public spaces in the past few years than in any other period of time in LA's history. Virtually every chapter is filled with such misinformation, but since his cannonization after the equally fictional City of Quartz, too many people have their reputations staked on his 'facts' for the truth to come out. Raised far from LA and spending most of his life in the 1970's and 1980's in Europe, Mike Davis has pulled off what Clifford Irving only dreamed of in the Howard Hughes Dairies. But no one will ever be allowed to know this for that would be too harmful for the book/media industries to admit how they had been hoodwinked.
Rating:
Summary: Another dazzling read
Review: It's kind of embarrassing getting so engrossed in a book, then having to admit to amused passers-by that it's about - well, geography and weather and local politics and B-grade science fiction in and around Los Angeles. Trust Mike Davis to write an adventure story for the conscience and the intellect.
Rating:
Summary: Been There, Done That!
Review: Having lived in the Long Beach and Los Angeles area for most of my life, I could readily appreciate Mike Davis' new book, The Ecology of Fear. All of what he writes about floods, riots, earthquakes, droughts, and such is all too accurate. I thought the 1994 Northridge Earthquake might have been the "Big One," but Davis says it's a blink of an eye compared to the really big event -- Yikes! I have recently moved to Santa Barbara, where the rain and floods are even worse than L.A. It makes one think they should move to Kansas! Well, maybe not yet. Davis's book is fascinating and well researched. A very interesting, albeit disturbing read. Read this book, it's great!
Rating:
Summary: Can't Wait For It!
Review: I am a big fan of Mike Davis and can't wait for this book! Mike Davis is Los Angeles, a city of contrasts and conflicts, where third world people live in first world shantytowns, and the destructive nature of unbridled comsumerism gone amok leads to one of the most polarized cities in the world in terms of the wealth and poverty. I love the guy and recommend everything he writes.
Rating:
Summary: You'll like parts and be bored by others...
Review: "Ecology of Fear" is unfortunately a necessary book in which Mike Davis once again denounces how the United States has managed to create a completely Apartheid-like society, but has done such a good job at it that people hardly perceive that they are living in a divided world (in this book, the divisions most commonly pointed out is the one between natural areas and inhabited areas, but we are also shown how a city is divided between poor and wealthy, and nature's role in this division). Nowhere is this more acute than in Los Angeles, the epitome of social division and exploitation of every natural resource. Davis convincingly shows how the natural world is utterly obliterated, with bogus re-creations made in its place where necessary, as a blind eye is turned to all of the destruction and the special interests of the wealthy are always put before those of the have-nots. This is the aspect of the book that I found most interesting (more sociological and political), but there are chapters for people with different tastes and interests. For movie buffs or sci-fi novel readers, there are very well-documented sections on the portrayal of disasters in the Los Angeles area (I personally found this part less fascinating, because that is not my area of interest, but to many it may be). For environmentalists the book is a must-read on how NOT to manage an urban area. For local historians, there are some great anecdotes on LA history that I had never seen or read anywhere, and my family has lived in the LA area for decades. The saddest part of the book is discovering just how short-sighted people can be when making policy decisions and that capitalism's solution of allowing the power of money and majority opinion to solve everything does not lead those who possess power and wealth to make the soundest decisions in many, if not most, cases. And who knew that there are tornadoes in Los Angeles?!
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."
Rating:
Summary: Great for Residents of Los Angeles
Review: As a resident of Los Angeles I found Ecology of Fear a great and informative read. I understand those who review it and find things to quibble with. Nothing is perfect. But for someone like me, possessed before reading this with a feeling that so many things in LA were just wrong, but not having a good understanding how how and why things got to be so messed up in so many ways, Ecology of Fear is an indispensible book. Perhaps the greatest thing I took away from this book was an abiding sense of the "alternate reality" LA that perhaps exists in some other dimension-- an LA where greenbelts line the rivers, where the foothills are left undeveloped and able to burn seasonally as meant to, and where resources are more equitably distributed.
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