Dead cities, and other tales

"In the first part of Dead Cities, the horror of lower Manhattan's falling skyscrapers (already anticipated by Welles, Lorca, and Dos Passos) is conjugated with Las Vegas' delirious delight in blowing up its landmark hotels. The Glitterdome's insatiable drinking spree, moreover, has become a symbol for the urban West's approaching showdown with Mother Nature. But in other parts of Marlboro country the apocalypse has already happened. The eerie Pentagon deserts of Nevada and Utah - with their destroyed landscapes, "doomtowns," and leukemic children - are a backdrop to the story of the New Deal's last great public works project the incineration of the cities of Germany and Japan." "Likewise, the wasteland flanks of downtown L.A. are a stage for tales of infinite greed, urban neglect, political scandal, neighborhood-level ethnic cleansing, and, ultimately, the firestorm of 1992. In the essays on "extreme science," Davis explains how the "neocatastrophist" revolution in earth sciences might become a paradigm for understanding the violent punctuated evolution of big cities. The title essay is an astonishing autopsy of metropolis dead on a slab, with reflections on "bomber ecology" and "