This is an L.A. that has never been described before. With a new afterword.

"Its intelligent combination of essays reveals much about Los Angeles which does not always find its way into socio-historical texts about the area. The editors' remarks preceding each essay expertly bind the book together.

This is essential reading for anyone interested in the literature and changing image of Southern California.

Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny.

With discussions of characters like Leon Ray Livingston (a.k.a. “A-No. 1”), credited with consolidating the entire system of hobo communication in the 1910s, and Kathy Zuckerman, better known as the surf icon “Gidget,” this lavishly ...

This new edition of the visionary social history of Los Angeles is “as central to the L.A. canon as anything that .

After twenty-five years of covering a city in wild transition, Los Angels Times columnist Al Martinez takes a shot at capturing Los Angeles in still life, as it is now, today, this very moment.

"Los Angeles feels like one of the most American cities in America," writes novelist and short-story writer A. M. Homes on her choice of subjects for a travel memoir, "a mythological mecca, an epicenter for visionaries, romantics, and ...