Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See

A muckraking history of San Diego that covers the city's historically recent shift from politically conservative to politically progressive while also outlining a new cast of right-wing villains and tenacious activists fighting for social justice.

"Behind the luminous veneer of San Diego, there is also a powerful story of radical activism and resistance--vital inspiration for our times." --Angela Davis

"A left-leaning, fascinating history of San Diego that debunks the notion of America's Finest City."―San Diego Magazine

San Diego is a sunny paradise for over thirty million tourists each year. But America's eighth largest metropolis conceals a vast dark side of militarization, economic inequality, municipal corruption, and racial injustice. This updated and expanded edition of Under the Perfect Sun contains three muckraking essays that expose the underbelly of this city and interrogate its recent turn from red to blue.

Mike Davis outlines the making and re-making of San Diego by a series of largely unchecked local plutocrats, from the snarling Republicans of old to what he calls "high tech . . . opportunist Clinton Democracy." He moves from John D. Spreckels' crushing dissent amidst the Free Speech Fight during the Progressive era to a new class of politically shapeshifting business elites ushering in the "tidal wave of gentrification" that continues to this day. Jim Miller offers a bottom-up, peoples' history of San Diego from the perspective of activists of all stripes--workers, immigrants, civil rights, and anti-war advocates--seeking to challenge the local hegemony. And oral historian Kelly Mayhew sketches life in this tourist wonderland with a series of interviews that reveal the "Other San Diego," including stories from a wide range of local activists and everyday citizens who share the reality of living in San Diego. This twentieth-anniversary edition is an ode to one of America's most complex cities.

Author: Mike Davis,Kelly Mayhew,Jim Miller
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 05/26/2026
Pages: 528
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 8.24h x 5.55w x 1.44d
ISBN: 9781644215449

About the Author
Mike Davis (1946-2022) was a legendary modern American historian, self-described urban theorist, and political activist. His 1998 book Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster is a prescient commentary on capitalism's role in the rise of natural disasters in California. The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu (2005) describes the impact of economic disparity during pandemics. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990), Dead Cities and Other Tales (2002), Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class (2006), and, with Jon Wiener, Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties (2020) each addressed in new ways the most pressing problems facing our nation. Davis's writing appeared regularly in The Nation, The New Left Review, and Jacobin. A distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, Davis received a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1998 and won the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2007.

Jim Miller is the author of the novels Drift (2024), Flash (2010), and Last Days in Ocean Beach (2018), and the editor of Sunshine/Noir: Writing from San Diego & Tijuana (2005) and, with Kelly Mayhew, Sunshine/Noir II, and Democracy for Education; Education for Democracy: An Oral History of the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931, 1969-2006 (2016), and co-editor with Kelly Mayhew of Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire (2005). A contributor to the San Diego Union-Tribune, The San Diego Free Press, American Book Review, and California Quarterly, among others, Miller is a professor of English and Labor Studies at San Diego City College and vice president of political action and community outreach for the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931.

Kelly Mayhew is a founding member of the San Diego Writers Collective and Managing Editor of City Works Press, a progressive, all-volunteer non-profit publishing project housed at City College. Co-author, alongside Jim Miller, of Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire (2005), Mayhew also co-edited, with Alys Masek, Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting (2010), with Paula S. Rothenberg, Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study 9th edition (2013) and, with Jim Miller, Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego & Tijuana (2005). Mayhew is a professor of English, Humanities, Gender Studies, and Labor Studies at San Diego City College, where she also serves as vice president for the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931.