Michael Ryan Davis was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He was best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books were Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism.