What is it that turns smart people into Marxists?

I cannot write this review without prefacing the perspective that I come from: I'm from LA, a member of a West Side Jewish family involved in real estate development, and these days a grad student in science and technology studies. What I was interested in was what Los Angeles means; is it the American dream or the American nightmare? Davis almost gets there, but instead gets stuck reproducing the shibboleths of political economy.

Davis chronicles the struggles of various LA power centers: the downtown establishment against the Westside insurgency; boosters against noir exiles; white and black; police and gangs; factions within the catholic church. But while he starts from a fascinating premise the LA is somehow a uniquely post-modern city, he quickly becomes embroiled in standard narratives about oppressed minorities struggling against fascist power structures. I don't disagree with him here, LA is a racist and oppressive city, and was more so in the late 80s when this book was researched, but saying so isn't particularly interesting. I enjoyed the chapters on noir and police brutality, and a glimpse into the hidden workings of the Catholic church, but Davis spent so much time look for the periphery that he misses the centers of power lie the LA Times, the County Board of Supervisors, Home Owners Associations, or transit planning (these are centers he himself brings up, and then glosses over in favor of community organizers and unions).

This isn't the worst book ever, and it's actually a fun read for Marxist geography, but it's not the LA that I know, (development, freeways, Hollywood, Judaism, the West Side, and The Valley), and it's not the "real LA" either, whatever that is.