Overview

The classic, brilliant, bestselling account of the rise of the world's slums, where, according to the United Nations, one billion people now live. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory. Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt? Davis provides the first global overview of the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor. He surveys Hindu fundamentalism in Bombay, the Islamist resistance in Casablanca and Cairo, street gangs in Cape Town and San Salvador, Pentecostalism in Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro, and revolutionary populism in Caracas and La Paz. Planet of Slums ends with a provocative meditation on the war on terrorism as an incipient world war between the American empire and the new slum poor.

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Mike Davis is the author of several books including City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, Planet of Slums, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in Papa'aloa, Hawaii. Mike Lenz has been an audiobook narrator and voice actor for more than fourteen years. Having narrated titles in genres ranging from fiction, entertainment, science, and children's literature to Christian, business, self-help, and history, Mike loves bringing nonfiction and fiction stories to life with his engaging, confident, and trustworthy voice. Mike's broad background includes voicing commercials, eLearning projects, real estate videos, corporate and web-based videos, and brand imaging, appearing in regional and national television commercials as an on-camera talent, and serving as the mayor of his hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York. Mike is also a Voice Arts Award-nominated podcast producer as well as an author. He is a frequent speaker at learning and voice-over conferences. Mike currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and four children.

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