The power of Mike Davis’s “Prisoners of the American Dream” is that it shows how the US ruling class bought off parts of the working class with nationalism and racism thwarting the formation of a mass working class party. The failure of the book is that it is not read enough. RIP

Mike Davis, the legendary socialist writer who passed away last week, sat down with us last summer to talk about his first book, “Prisoners of the American Dream,” one of the most rigorous explorations of American labor history in the last half century. https://t.co/vY0cvW7O3y

Very sad to hear that Mike Davis is gravely ill. City of Quartz is justly regarded as his masterpiece but his book on American labor is stunning as well, one of the best studies of the US working-class that I’ve read.