Historian Jon Wiener Discusses His Latest Book Set The Night On Fire: LA In The Sixties

In this interview Maggie focuses on "The Many Faces of Women's Liberation" starting in the early 1960's.  Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties by Mike Davis and Jon WienerNow available in paperback. A magisterial, riveting movement history of Los Angeles in the SixtiesLos 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.Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide 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 awardwinning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.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 US 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.Source: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3752-set-the-night-on-fireSource: https://jonwiener.comThis episode is from an archive from the KPFK program Profiles adapted for podcast. Host Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica station KPFK Radio in Los Angeles since 1994. Send us Fan MailSupport the show@profileswithmaggielepique@maggielepique