Mike Davis, the Marxist scholar and author known as a crusader against social injustice and economic inequality, has died at 76, the Nation reports.

Davis was born and raised in Southern California and became interested in leftist activism as a teenager. He worked as an organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society before attending UCLA, where he studied history.

In 1990, he published City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, a social history of the city that focused on which people and groups actually held power in the metropolis; it became a bestseller. He would go on to write several other books, including Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster, Dead Cities, and, in 2020, The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism, as well as a book co-written with Jon Wiener, Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.

In a July interview with the Los Angeles Times, Davis reflected on the end of his life after he decided to stop receiving chemotherapy treatments for cancer.

“I guess what I think about the most is that I’m just extraordinarily furious and angry,” he said. “If I have a regret, it’s not dying in battle or at a barricade as I’ve always romantically imagined—you know, fighting.”

In a tribute posted on its website, Verso, which published many of Davis’ books, wrote, “His life was lived on the Left and he both learnt from others and educated many more.…His many books will always live. We were very proud to publish and work with him.”

Davis was also remembered on social media by his readers and admirers, including author Mark Dery, who tweeted, “The lion sleeps tonight. Rest in power and incendiary brilliance, Mike Davis … Marxist firebrand, writer's writer. Your moral compass never wavered, pointing me to the true north of radical thought and revolutionary dreams whenever I lost my bearings. It always will.”

Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.