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BuzzFlash Reviews "Planet of Slums"

"A profound enquiry into an urgent subject...a brilliant book."
-- Arundhati Roy

Planet of Slums (Hardcover)
by Mike Davis

BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt)

If Al Gore is reawakening the world to the dangers of global warming, Mike Davis reignites interest in an equally under-covered topic: the growth of urban mega-slums primarily, but not exclusively, in the third world.

This is not an abstract concept: it is a development with real and deadly consequences. In fact, Davis concludes his book by tying elements of the complex factions behind anti-U.S. fighters (all of whom Bush lumps together as terrorists) into products of the mega-slum.

"Indeed," Davis writes, "the unemployed teenage fighters of the 'Mahdi Army' in Baghdad's Sadr City -- one of the world's largest slums -- taunt American occupiers with the promise that their main boulevard is 'Vietnam Street.'" In short, at least one component of Bush's public relations "war on terrorism" is aimed at suppressing a revolt of the poor that the administration unleashed when it invaded Iraq.

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http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/224

Other Reviews of "Planet of Slums"

"Scourge of neo-liberal nostrums, [Davis] debunks the irresponsible myth of self-help salvation, showing who gets the boot from 'bootstrap capitalism."
-- Michael Sorkin

"A global approach to documenting the astonishing depth of squalid poverty that dominates the lives of the planet's increasingly urban population.... Davis paints a bleak picture of the upward trend in urbanization and maintains a stark outlook for slum-dwellers' futures."
-- Publisher's Weekly

posted by Annamarie at 11:31 PM