A pictorial history of the world's most enigmatic city
From the first known photograph taken in Los Angeles to its most recent sweeping vistas, this photographic tribute to the City of Angels provides a fascinating journey through the city's cultural, political, industrial, and sociological history. It traces the city's development from the 1880s' real estate boom, through the early days of Hollywood and the urban sprawl of the late 20th century, right up to the present day. With over 500 images, L.A. is shown emerging from a desert wasteland to become a vast palm-studded urban metropolis.
Events that made world news-including two Olympics, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and the Rodney King riots-reveal a city of many dimensions. The entertainment capital of the world, Hollywood, and its celebrities are showcased along with many other notable residents, personalities, architects, artists, and musicians. The city's pop cultural movements, its music, surfing, health food fads, gangs, and hot rods are included, as are its notorious crimes and criminals. This book depicts Los Angeles in all its glory and grit, via hundreds of freshly discovered images including those of Julius Shulman, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton and many other superb photographers, culled from major historical archives, museums, private collectors, and universities. These are given context and resonance through essays by renowned California historian Kevin Starr and Los Angeles literature expert David Ulin.

An original collection of paintings, "100 Not So Famous Views of L.A." offers intimate, often recognizable, sometimes unexpected glimpses of a city known and loved by the artist. Inspired by nineteenth-century Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige's "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, " Los Angeles artist Barbara Thomason captures the charm and personality of her vibrant city, with commentary and history.

Barbara Thomason is a Los Angeles-based artist and professor of printmaking, sculpture, and painting at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her paintings, drawings, and prints have been shown in exhibitions at many galleries, museums, and universities. She received a masters degree in printmaking from California State University, Long Beach, and worked as a master printer in lithography at the renowned Gemini G.E.L., where she printed for Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Ed Ruscha, Ellsworh Kelly, and many others. She has been on the art faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Redlands; Otis College of Art and Design; and other fine institutions.

David Ulin" is a book critic for the "Los Angeles Times" and the editor of The Library of America's "Writing Los Angeles."

Seismologist Charlie Richter, grandson of the inventor of the Richter scale, knows earthquakes, and has a method for predicting them. Arriving in Los Angeles to begin work at the Center for Earthquake Studies, a mysterious agency that seems more Hollywood than science, Charlie settles into his new life. His only distraction from work is Grace, an assistant to a powerful producer, and her deadbeat scriptwriter boyfriend Ian. It's only a matter of time before Charlie sees the "Big One" looming on the horizon. When Charlie alerts his boss at the Center, he is the one that's in for a shock: this is exactly what the Center was hoping for. With the news leaked, everyone's suddenly looking to produce the next disaster blockbuster. One of the few scripts Ian actually wrote, Ear to the Ground, happens to be about an earthquake disaster, and soon it's plucked from obscurity and given the fast track. But with a little bit of luck, Charlie may just foil everybody's plans. He just needs explosives, a helicopter, a little more time. By award-winning writer and Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin, Ear to the Ground is a rollicking visit back to the 1990s.

In Sidewalking, David L Ulin offers a compelling inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles. Part personal narrative, part investigation of the city as both idea and environment, Sidewalking is many things: a discussion of Los Angeles as urban space, a history of the city's built environment, a meditation on the author's relationship to the city, and a rumination on the art of urban walking. Exploring Los Angeles through the soles of his feet, Ulin gets at the experience of its street life, drawing from urban theory, pop culture, and literature. For readers interested in the culture of Los Angeles, this book offers a pointed look beneath the surface in order to see, and engage with, the city on its own terms.

Earthquakes are one of the great unsolved geological mysteries. Attempts to predict them have ranged from studies of California's fault lines by USGS geologists to the work of an odd assortment of psychics and apocalyptics who base their sometimes startlingly accurate forecasts on everything from changes in the earth's magnetic fields to the behavior of whales. The Myth of Solid Ground is a journey, both personal and cultural, through the world of earthquakes and earthquake prediction, one that seeks a middle ground between science and superstition, while also looking for a larger context in which seismicity might make sense. An excellent primer on the science of seismology, The Myth of Solid Ground looks at earthquakes as the ultimate metaphor for living with impending disaster.