In Praise of Barbarians Essays Against Empire

Mike Davis attacks the current fashion for empires and white men?s burdens in this blistering collection of radical essays. He skewers such contemporary idols as Mel Gibson and Howard Dean, debates with Tom Frank about ?what?s the matter with America,? unlocks some secret doors in the Pentagon and the California prison system, visits Star Wars in the Arctic and vigilantes on the U.S.-Mexico border, predicts ethnic cleansing in New Orleans more than a year before Katrina, commemorates the anarchist avengers of the 1890s, remembers ?Private Ivan? who defeated fascism, recalls the ?teenybopper riots? on Sunset Strip, and looks at the future of global capitalism from the top of Hubbert?s Peak.

Writer, historian, and socialist activist Mike Davis is the author of many books, including City of Quartz, The Ecology of Fear, The Monster at Our Door, Planet of Slums, Buda?s Wagon, and, from Haymarket Books, No One Is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State Repression on the U.S.-Mexico Border, with Justin Akers Chacón. He also wrote the preface to the Haymarket Books edition of Ray Ginger?s powerful biography of Eugene Debs, The Bending Cross. Davis lives in San Diego.