Explore 1960s Los Angeles with Faculty Author Jon Wiener ♥ ★
Wednesday, Oct 14, 2020 @ 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
- This event has passed.
Join Jon Wiener (UCI History) in conversation with Daniel Widener (UCSD History) about Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties, a new book by Jon Wiener and Mike Davis. The conversation will be introduced and moderated by Julia Lupton (UCI English).
BOOK: Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties
Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power—where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.
This monumental book provides the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors’ storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis’s award winning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.
MEET THE AUTHOR: Jon Wiener (History)
Jon Wiener is a longtime Contributing Editor at the Nation and host and producer of Start Making Sense, the magazine’s weekly podcast. He is an Emeritus Professor of U.S. history at UC Irvine, and his books include Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files and How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America. He lives in Los Angeles.
Danny Widener teaches Modern American history, with a focus on expressive culture and political radicalism. He began his educational career at the Echo Park-Silverlake Peoples’ Childcare Center. He studied at Berkeley and New York University. He teaches courses on Cuba, African American History, California, Sport, and Film. He is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur.
This event is part of Illuminaries, our new series of Zoom book talks featuring UCI faculty and instructors.