Thanks Evgenia for resurrecting this interview. Have read a lot by Mike Davis over the last thirty years and had come to really enjoy and respect the wide range of topics he wrote on. Surely not acknowledged enough today, even by the Left. From chronicling the development of the urban hell of Southern California, to a background on influenza epidemics, to a history of the car bomb and much more. One of his least known works is “Late Victorian Holocausts” provides a history of how the deliberate economic policies of western capitalist and imperialist powers greatly exacerbated and intensified famines from Brazil to India at the cost of tens of millions of lives. A good rebuke to those ideologues who constantly focus on the economic policy mistakes of socialist countries which lead to much needless suffering - the Ukrainian famine and Great Leap Forward comes to mind. His intellect and writing will be sorely missed.
Thanks Evgenia for resurrecting this interview. Have read a lot by Mike Davis over the last thirty years and had come to really enjoy and respect the wide range of topics he wrote on. Surely not acknowledged enough today, even by the Left. From chronicling the development of the urban hell of Southern California, to a background on influenza epidemics, to a history of the car bomb and much more. One of his least known works is “Late Victorian Holocausts” provides a history of how the deliberate economic policies of western capitalist and imperialist powers greatly exacerbated and intensified famines from Brazil to India at the cost of tens of millions of lives. A good rebuke to those ideologues who constantly focus on the economic policy mistakes of socialist countries which lead to much needless suffering - the Ukrainian famine and Great Leap Forward comes to mind. His intellect and writing will be sorely missed.