“Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties is a book by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener about Los Angeles in the 1960s. The authors combine archival research and personal interviews with their own experiences in the civil rights and anti-war movements to tell the social history or, as the authors term it, ‘movement history’ of this transformative decade. The book’s purpose is not to present a comprehensive history of 1960s Los Angeles but to dispel the mythology surrounding this era and replace it with the neglected history of the populist social and cultural movements that shifted power away from an entrenched elite and opened up opportunities for radical egalitarian change. … The book covers a period of more than ten years beginning at the start of the decade with a description of the Los Angeles of the 1950s and ending with the defeat of Sam Yorty…