In Health as Property: Racial Capitalism and Sexual Liberalism in Los Angeles, historian Nic John Ramos delivers an ambitious and deeply unsettling account of race, healthcare, and urban political economy in postwar L.A. The book centers on the history of the King-Drew Medical Center, a Black-led hospital established in the aftermath of the 1965 Watts uprising. But Ramos’s project is far larger than institutional history. He argues that modern American healthcare cannot be understood apart from the intertwined histories of racial capitalism, redevelopment, and the policing of sexuality and gender. The book’s central concept — that “health” functions as a Read more