Angel City Press
Explore the history, culture, and stories of Los Angeles and the Golden State
Brown Acres
The complex and often alarming history of the Los Angeles city sewer system is captured for the first time in Anna Sklar’s Brown Acres: An Intimate History of the Los Angeles Sewers. With more than fifty photographs, diagrams and maps, Brown Acres is the first historical narrative to detail any world-class city’s sewer system, complete with the relationship between headstrong politicians and the reformers who sought to “heal the bay” after a century of pollution and contamination. Brown Acres provides a unique look at the underground history of Los Angeles.
Crestwood Hills
The fascinating story of people and mid-century modern architecture, merging and prevailing to create a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Their Crestwood Hills is like no other place in the vast metropolis—its history is the result of the singular optimism that defined Southern California in the post-World War II era. A handful of the region’s optimists banded together to form a cooperative intent on building a utopian community. And they did.
Rock 'N' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip
The 1967 Sunset Strip exploded with rock culture as giant hand-painted billboards became temporary monuments to music’s coming of age—visual celebrations beginning with The Doors that captured the revolutionary spirit of an era. The Sunset Strip, circa 1967. Buffalo Springfield called it right: “There’s something happening here…what it is ain’t exactly clear.” What was happening then is now absolutely clear. Rock ’n’ roll and the kids who lived it were coming of age—right there on The Strip.
Twentynine Palms
Twentynine Palms is a compelling account of the devastating murder of two young girls by a troubled Marine in the rural California desert town of Twentynine Palms. More than just a murder-mystery, Twenty-nine Palms is a passionate dissection of desert life itself. With the desert as a main character, Deanne traces the family histories of the murder victims back for generations, in one case to the Donner Party and the other to a shack in the Philippines, and then, the inevitable and fatal arrival of each family in the Mojave. Her focus is the world of rootless kids who live in the shadows of a giant military base on the edge of the modern American frontier.
Exhibitionist
Earl L. Stendahl came to Los Angeles in 1909 with the zeal of a showman and an extraordinary eye, and went on to create one of the most influential art galleries in the world. Never-published vintage photographs from the Stendahl family archive illustrate this colorful biography of the man who introduced modern art to Los Angeles and put Pre-Columbian art on the map.
Elements of Los Angeles
Acclaimed essayist D.J. Waldie turns his eyes to the elements of Los Angeles—earth, water, air and fire—exploring the foundations of the city with his trademark wisdom, elegance, and incisiveness.
Finalist, Foreword INDIES, Essays (Adult Nonfiction)
“Reading Waldie’s essays about Los Angeles is not unlike listening to someone tell you the stories of their life.” —Los Angeles Times Image Magazine
“A love letter to Los Angeles” — Alta magazine
Art Deco Los Angeles
Step into the captivating world of Art Deco Los Angeles through the lens of renowned photographer Robert Landau.
Finalist, Foreword INDIES, Regional (Adult Nonfiction)
Art Deco Los Angles is a stunning photographic tour through one of the most glamourous architectural eras of the City of Angels. From the iconic Hollywood Bowl, where the world’s biggest acts dazzle under the evening sky, to the majestic Wiltern Theater, a timeless beacon of architectural grandeur, each photograph encapsulates the essence of Art Deco glamour.
Los Angeles City Hall
Los Angeles City Hall is one of the most iconic buildings in America; some say, the world. A bold symbol of the ambition of America and its people, City Hall graces California as one of its most enduring landmarks. When it opened its doors in 1928, the new Los Angeles City Hall was the tallest building in the city and undeniably beloved by its people—and they hadn’t even been inside yet. Indeed, more than a half-million people lined the streets to celebrate the dedication of the monolith that symbolized Los Angeles’s successful transition from West Coast outpost to world-class metropolis.
Symphony in Steel
Photographer Gary Leonard captured architectural history by documenting Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall from groundbreaking to completion—now preserved in the definitive photo chronicle “Symphony in Steel.” When Frank Gehry makes a new building—that’s architectural history! And when Gary Leonard gets out his cameras, Los Angeles history is recorded forever! So is it any wonder that Gary Leonard is the only photographer to have documented Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles from the first shovel of dirt that was lifted on groundbreaking day right through to completion? And now, his pictures are the definitive Walt Disney Concert Hall-in-the-making book: Symphony in Steel.
Hollywood Poolside
Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Bogie and Bacall and other icons are pictured enjoying a true California institution — the swimming pool. More than 100 photos of stars by the pool. This remarkable hit in hardcover has been revised for the paperbound edition, with 16 pages of rare photos added. Remember: no pool, lake or beach will be complete without HOLLYWOOD POOLSIDE!
Don't Stop the Presses!
Newspapers remain democracy’s cornerstone as “the first draft of history”—journalist Patt Morrison celebrates this essential American institution in “Don’t Stop the Presses!” exploring journalism’s vital role in preserving truth and justice. Real News on real paper. Newspapers—a free press—were the cornerstone of the Founding Fathers’ working model of democracy. And they remain so. Whether read at the kitchen table, in the boardroom, or on a laptop on the subway, newspapers—as has been said of them for more than a half-century—are “the first draft of history.” Veteran journalist Patt Morrison proves it, and then some, in the pages of Don’t Stop the Presses! Truth, Justice, and the American Newspaper.
California's Spanish Place Names
Discover the fascinating stories behind California’s Spanish place names—like Paseo Cerveza (Beer Boulevard) and Alameda de las Pulgas (Mall of the Fleas)—in this comprehensive study of romantic-sounding but sometimes misleadingly named locales. Husband-and-wife team Barbara and Rudy Marinacci delve into the history of more than 1,500 Spanish words and place names, which are the most widely used and recognizable names for California’s historical and geographic features.
¡Murales Rebeldes!
The Chicano Civil Rights Movement (El Movimiento) of the 1960s and 1970s protested the social, political, and educational inequalities in Mexican American communities across the country, primarily in the Southwest. Chicana/Chicano muralists also took to the streets–with their art–creating works that expressed cultural pride, embodied political activism, and challenged the status quo. On walls of city buildings, housing projects, schools, and other community structures, they painted their interpretations of Chicana/o heritage and identity. In Los Angeles and its environs, Chicana/o murals reinvigorated and transformed communities, expanding into new genres and locations.
Preserving Los Angeles
Ken Bernstein, a Principal City Planner for the City of Los Angeles shares how Los Angeles has led the nation in historic preservation and how other cities can do the same with his Los Angeles Times bestseller.
2021 Foreword Indies, GOLD: Regional
Los Angeles has an image as the “City of the Future”—a city always at the cutting edge of change—but also as a “throwaway metropolis” that cares little about its history or architectural legacy. Yet the reality is quite different. Over the past decade, the City of Los Angeles has developed one of the most successful historic preservation programs in the nation, culminating with the completion of the nation’s most ambitious citywide survey of historic resources.
Noir Afloat
Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It’s Ernest Marquez’s latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.
Regarding Paul R. Williams
Janna Ireland, an award-winning photographer, presents a collection of stunning, intimate black-and-white photographs of the work of Paul Revere Williams, who was known as “Hollywood’s Architect” and was the first black architect admitted to the American Institute of Architecture. Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View is a photographic exploration of the work of the first AIA-certified Black architect west of the Mississippi River. Known as “Hollywood’s Architect”, Paul Revere Williams was a Los Angeles native who built a wildly successful and as an architect decades before the Civil Rights Movement. He designed municipal buildings and private homes as well as banks, churches, hospitals, and university halls.
Songs in the Key of Los Angeles
Culled from the Southern California Sheet Music Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, this unprecedented anthology tells the story of Los Angeles through its songs. Featuring the elaborately designed covers of more than one hundred pieces of vintage sheet music, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles spans 1859 to 1959, offering a rare musical window into Southern California history—from mythic Missions to infinite oranges, from rumbling railroads to romantic Ramona . . . and there’s Hollywood history, too, harmoniously noted by its music and film industries.
Paradise Promoted
With more than 250 photographs and rare ephemera, all collected by author Tom Zimmerman, Paradise Promoted is the first book to showcase the era from 1870 to 1930 when boosters developed the small town of Los Angeles into the city that would become America’s most cutting-edge metropolis. Los Angeles was the subject of the longest, loudest, most persistent promotional campaign in the history of the United States. Nothing was too exaggerated, absurd, or flat-out bizarre to be fodder for the relentless effort to convince Americans to slam the door forever on their home and sally forth to what booster supreme G.W. Burton called “The fairest daughter among the sisterhood of cities in the world.”
Our Lady of the Angels
Seventeen years of photographs of murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the walls of Los Angeles, a potent symbol of the city’s unique cultural heritage. On storefronts, alleyways, and street corners across the city, murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe grace the walls of Los Angeles in a tapestry of faith, identity, and culture. Our Lady of the Angels: The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles captures the sacred and everyday presence of Guadalupe murals across the city, offering a poignant lens into the cultural heartbeat of LA neighborhoods. Each image is a testament to community, artistry, and devotion—a visual pilgrimage through urban altars where spirituality meets street art.
In Case You Missed It
Jerry de Wilde’s gorgeous photography captures a deeply intimate portrait of a lost era—Los Angeles in the 1960s. In Case You Missed It: Counterculture Photography of the 1960s and 1970s captures a moment that burned fast and bright—Los Angeles at the crest of the countercultural tide. Through Jerry “Dok” de Wilde’s lens, the era comes alive in vivid, intimate detail: from daily life at “the Farm,” a commune in what is now the Hollywood Hills, where creative and social experimentation flourished, to the larger currents of history unfolding at Monterey Pop and the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam.
Hollywood Signs
Discover the glitz and glamour of Hollywood through a tour of its most fabulous mid-century neon signs! Take in the glitz, glamour, and graphics of vintage Hollywood with Hollywood Signs: Glittering Graphics and Glowing Neon in Mid-Century Tinseltown. The glittering lights of the big city have never been brighter than in this delightful book from author/designer Kathy Kikkert. Featuring signage from Hollywood’s hottest bars, nightclubs, restaurants and movie theaters, Hollywood Signs is a glowing love letter to Tinsletown type. And who can forget the sign that started it all, the original and iconic “Hollywood Sign” perched on its hill for all to admire.
Santa Monica Pier
This revised edition takes the history of the Santa Monica Pier even deeper, with new information and photographs that fans of the world’s famed pleasure piers and the historic venues of Southern California will find entertaining. Celebrate a century of good times on the Santa Monica Pier, with the revised edition of Santa Monica Pier: America’s Last Great Pleasure Pier! Vintage images and magnificent color photos capture this beloved international icon at its very best, now updated with more images and information than ever before. Its dramatic story of survival —fighting Mother Nature, politics and changing times—makes Santa Monica Pier more than a landmark, more than a pleasure pier or a must see on the West Coast.
KAOS Theory
A brilliant, multi-media work about artist, filmmaker, and community organizer Ben Caldwell.
“Caldwell’s restlessness of spirit is mimicked in the book’s elaborate, frenetic design. It is one of the most beautiful objects I held in my hands this year, a coffee-table book as much as a rigorous monograph, full of archival images, photographs, flyers, and documents telling the story of Caldwell’s life…”—The New Yorker
2023 Finalist for Biography, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Finalist, 2023 Golden Poppy Awards, California Independent Booksellers Association
California Book Award Gold Medal Winner for Contributions to Publishing
Mabel and Me
Mabel and Me is a novel about the Movies—a sharply observed, historically accurate, deliciously intimate story set in the earliest days of motion pictures. Beautifully told, this is a tale of Mack, his coming of age with the Movies, and his passionate, destructive, and ultimately liberating love for one of the very first movie stars, the sweetheart of slapstick—Mabel Normand. Theirs is the story of the birth of the modern movie age. It’s a story they lived together. Day in, day out. Until they didn’t. Mabel Normand was the model for the modern woman: her brief life, from slapstick girl to box-office bonanza to drug addict to modern savvy star, embodied the evolution of the Movies.
New Wave
Fifty years of the Vietnamese Diaspora as seen through the New Wave movement, showing how young Vietnamese refugees in Orange County found rebellion and reinvention through music, fashion, and community. As Vietnamese refugees sought safety in the United States in the wake of the fall of Saigon, a generation of Vietnamese teenagers and young adults struggled to adjust to a new life in America. Many of these young people in Southern California found a new life and a new identity in New Wave music, a type of Euro Disco that became enormously popular in this community. New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora celebrates the rebellion, reinvention, and rebirth of joy in this young generation in cultural limbo.
Sacred Material
Sacred Material details the historic saga of the creation of The Communion of Saints, The Baptism of the Lord, and The New Jerusalem, the monumental tapestry triptych by California artist John Nava. Nava shares the unprecedented journey of his tapestries from oils on canvas in his Ojai studio, to the looms of Belgium, to the walls of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Sacred Material Includes a six-page foldout documenting The Communion of Saints tapestries and a complete hagiography of the 135 saints and blesseds portrayed in the world’s greatest modern-day tapestry commission. A feast for the eyes . . . and the soul.
Googie Modern
A highly visual monograph of plans and concept drawings from the Armet Davis Newlove firm, the creator of what became known as “Googie Modern.” In Googie Modern: Architectural Drawings of Armet Davis Newlove, author Michael Murphy takes readers inside the private archives of the forward-thinking trio dubbed the “fathers of Googie.” Inspiring not just artists and filmmakers but the public at large, their futuristic coffee shops and restaurants made dining out a space-age experience, just as man was ready to walk on the moon. Armet Davis Newlove’s architecture captured the optimistic and forward-thinking mood in post-war America and set the bar for what would become Mid-Century Modern style.
Clubhouse Turn
Explore photographer Michele Asselin’s captivating documentation of Hollywood Park Race Track’s final days—a poignant visual record of this landmark’s seventy-five year history before demolition. On December 22, 2013, the world-famous Hollywood Park Race Track closed its doors forever. In 2014, demolition began on the landmark race track, effectively erasing seventy-five years of history, while at the same time making space for an entire new neighborhood to suddenly arise in the middle of the metropolis. Photographer Michele Asselin spent every day at Hollywood Park in the last two weeks before it closed, photographing the buildings, the employees, and the patrons of the track.
Bunker Hill Los Angeles
Explore the dramatic evolution of Bunker Hill from LA’s first wealthy suburb to urban underbelly and finally to vibrant cultural center. Bunker Hill is the highest point of downtown Los Angeles, both literally and figuratively. Its circle of life has created a continuous saga of change, each chapter rich with captivating characters, structures, and culture. In Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir, historian Nathan Marsak tells the story of the Hill, from the district’s inception in the mid-19th century to its present day. Once home to wealthy Angelenos living in LA’s “first suburb,” then the epicenter of the city’s shifting demographics and the shadow and vice of an urban underbelly, Bunker Hill survived its attempted erasure and burgeoned as a hub of arts, politics, business, and tourism.
Wilshire Boulevard
Wilshire Boulevard is the unofficial Main Street of dreams that flows through Los Angeles history. Like Los Angeles itself, Wilshire is an accidental phenomenon created out of civic pride and the yearning of the masses to drive. Its 15-mile route to the sea has been called the Fifth Avenue of the West and the Champs Elysees of the Pacific. Wilshire’s style, architecture and historic prominence are recorded in more than 150 photos, so readers understand the fascinating cultural geography of the first auto-dependent metropolis. Wilshire Boulevard details the thoroughfare’s crucial part in the emergence of Los Angeles as a world city and relates the fascinating story of Gaylord Wilshire, the turn-of-the-century social gadfly who never experienced his namesake’s enduring fame.
Judson
Judson: Innovation in Stained Glass by David Judson and Steffie Nelson is a history of the world-renowned family of artisans who began crafting stained glass windows in Los Angeles in 1897. Five generations of Judsons have worked with artists, architects, and designers to create Old World-style stained glass whose quality and craftsmanship has often been compared to the work of Louis Tiffany. Famed for its Craftsman glass, Judson arts-and-crafts era windows have been celebrated by experts in the field for decades. Judson’s work with Frank Lloyd Wright on Hollyhock House in the 1920s was recently re-saluted when the house was named to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.
Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography.
CORITA KENT. ART AND SOUL. THE BIOGRAPHY. is the painstakingly researched account of one of America’s icons, the nun who made a world of difference and, to her surprise, simultaneously made a name for herself. On the cover of Newsweek in 1967, Sister Mary Corita became known as the rebel nun. The prototype for every outspoken nun since. Yet Corita was never outspoken. A rebel, yes, but never outspoken. It was her artwork that spoke volumes. Her message was clear. Love. Peace. Joy. Godliness. With a unique calligraphic style and a playful spirit, Corita’s constructions or deconstructions of word and image shook up an art establishment that didn’t quite know what to do with a nun’s bold interpretation of her society.
RÍO L.A.
The bestselling book about the Los Angeles River, originally published in 2001, is updated with an Afterword that includes the Los Angeles County 2021 Master Plan to improve the quality of life and ecosystem health in the region. RIO-LA: Tales from the Los Angeles River 20th Anniversary Edition traces the history and lore of the Los Angeles River. When the book was first published in 2001, few people even regarded the river, but because of Morrison’s devotion to the topic, LA River has been rediscovered. The river has become the center of the county’s 2021 MasterPlan to reestablish it as the heart of the city, its lifeline to all things positive: an antidote to homelessness; a source of increased affordable housing; new jobs, good health; serenity.
Terminal Island
Terminal Island tells the story of a small island in the Los Angeles harbor and the communities that called it home.
“The book offers a rich record of that community and more. As is true of just about everything in Los Angeles, peeling back the layers of a place leads to unexpected discoveries.”—The Los Angeles Times
California Book Award Gold Medal Winner for Contributions to Publishing
Hollywood Chinese
Explore “Hollywood Chinese” through 500+ vintage photographs showcasing Chinese American influence in film—from early Chinatown portrayals to contemporary artists reshaping Hollywood, revealing both memorable moments and persistent misconceptions. Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films presents an intimate look at the Chinese American role and influence in Hollywood, from some of the earliest films set in America’s Chinatowns to the contemporary artists remaking the face of Hollywood. Filled with more than 500 stunning, vintage photographs, movie posters, lobby cards and assorted ephemera based on the author’s extraordinary personal collection, this lavish coffee-table book’s richly illustrated pages show the myths, misconceptions, and memorable moments of the Chinese in film.
Iconic Vision
Architect John Parkinson died in 1935, and the Los Angeles Times praised him: “Future generations have only to walk through the streets of Los Angeles to be reminded how much John Parkinson in his lifetime contributed to the city that grew up under his hand.” In Iconic Vision: John Parkinson, Architect of Los Angeles, author Stephen Gee proves that this singular visionary created the look of America’s most dynamic metropolis, long before the world recognized the city’s importance.
Cruising J-Town
A visual history of Japanese American car culture in Los Angeles, from gardeners’ trucks and family sedans to hot rods and race cars. 2025 SILVER Winner for Multicultural, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Finalist, 2025 CALIBA Golden Poppy Awards, Glenn Goldman: California Lifestyle
Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles explores how generations of Japanese Americans in Southern California shaped, and were shaped by, local automobile cultures and industries: from desert lakebeds to concrete speedways, gas stations to design centers, souped-up import tuners to humble gardening trucks. Along the way, cars and trucks became literal and figurative vehicles for Japanese American self-expression, social mobility, community identity, and much more.
California Eden
A striking and elegant coffee-table book highlighting cultural landscapes in California. California’s diverse vernacular and designed landscapes have roots in the late 1700s Spanish colonization of what was then called Alta California. The state also has a unique endemic flora and rich botanical history from both the Indigenous people’s “protoagriculture” and prescribed burn pyrodiversity to plant introductions by settlers and others that continue to this day. For many people, however, the concept of landscape is associated with gardens, especially estate gardens.
Bowlarama
A fun, visual book exploring the art, architecture and style of America’s mid-century obsession: Bowling!
Gold Medalist, 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards, Popular Culture Category
2024 SILVER Winner for Popular Culture, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Silver, 2024 PubWest Book Design Awards, Adult Trade Book – Illustrated
Bowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling takes aim at the obsession that swept the post-war nation: bowling! More than just a sport or a hobby, bowling became the ultimate modern lifestyle for Americans savoring the boom years that followed World War II. Bowling alleys were modern palaces; companies constantly aimed to outdo each other, whether competing for the most spectacular architecture, the most luxurious lanes, the snazziest bowling balls, or the most exciting refreshments they could offer.
The Orange and the Dream of California
Discover the orange’s fascinating journey from mythical “fruit of the gods” to symbol of California’s promise—a partnership that created both compelling fantasy and fantastic reality in America’s garden paradise. Cloaked in mystery and until modern times available only to the elite, the orange has been known as the fruit of the gods, the food of emperors, and the symbol of health, wealth, and love. The dream of California since its discovery by Europeans has been that it is a place of plenty, of potential, of personal opportunity. When the orange and California were finally linked, their partnership created a compelling fantasy and a fantastic reality.
Woody Guthrie L.A. 1937 to 1941
Discover how Woody Guthrie became the folk icon we know during his Los Angeles years (1937-1941)—a transformative period when his cross-country journey shaped his vision of America and crystallized the message that would inspire generations. We know Woody Guthrie as the role model for Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, as the bard of Greenwich Village, and of course as the scribe of America’s other national anthem “This Land is Your Land.” As we learn in the pages of Woody Guthrie L.A.: 1937 to 1941, Woody Guthrie became the Woody we know when he made his way west from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. He met America’s people. He saw the land that was his land, your land, my land. His eyes opened, his message sharpened, and his words were already on their way to iconic.
Becoming Los Angeles
Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays.
“Reading Waldie’s essays about Los Angeles is not unlike listening to someone tell you the stories of their life.” —Los Angeles Times Image Magazine
Nobody sees Los Angeles with more eloquence than D. J. Waldie.
– Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor
Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie’s particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion.
L.A. Painter
L.A. Painter is an autobiographical exploration of works by Karla Klarin, one of the best-known female artists in Los Angeles. Her abstract work and ten essays are focused on America’s most famous metropolis. L.A. Painter: The City I Know / The City I See is a full-color exploration of Karla Klarin’s abstract and modern landscapes of Los Angeles, where she was born, raised, and became one of the city’s most influential female painters. This first full monograph of her work is accompanied by ten essays that define her hometown—a city of moving parts and people that exist within a geometry of impressive expanse and beauty.
Santa Monica Beach
Of all the Mexican land grant ranchos in California, only Rancho Boca de Santa Monica and Rancho San Vicente could lay claim to a treasured territory that included the most beautiful shore in North America, Santa Monica Beach. When the land grant Rancho Boca de Santa Monica was awarded to Francisco Marquez and Ysidro Reyes in 1839, little did their families imagine that the sand separating their land from the waters of the Pacific would become one of the most famous beaches in the world, now visited by millions of visitors each year. The Marquez-Reyes union helped define the history of Santa Monica Beach. Now, one of their own descendants has documented that rich and romantic past.
To Live and Dine in L.A.
Discover the fascinating story of Los Angeles through the lens of food history in Josh Kun’s visually stunning book featuring over 200 historic menus—a delicious exploration of how culinary culture helped shape the modern city we know today. How did Los Angeles become the modern city the world watches? We know some of the answers all too well. Sunshine. Railroads. Hollywood. Freeways. But there’s another often overlooked but especially delicious and revealing factor: food. In its fourth book collaboration with the Los Angeles Public Library and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Angel City Press releases To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City by Josh Kun. With more than 200 menus—some dating back to the nineteenth century— To Live and Dine in L.A. is a visual feast of a book.
Common Ground
Anderton examines how Los Angeles can address its housing crisis by reimagining multi-family dwellings—showing how apartments can function as both excellent architecture and thriving social systems that rival single-family homes. As Los Angeles confronts a growing housing crisis, a city known for its single-family housing will inevitably shift toward a greater emphasis on apartments and other types of multi-family housing. Anderton’s book shows how connected dwellings work as good architecture and good social systems; multi-family housing itself will become an aspirational form of dwelling, not second in status or style to single family homes.
2022 GOLD Winner for Regional, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Where Are We Now
Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles is the second book by D.J. Waldie, one of the most gifted writers on the American scene. As Los Angeles Times columnist and NPR commentator Patt Morrison notes in her foreword, “The suburb is America’s lifeline and its punchline, and Waldie is its bard.” Few observers can present the facts of everyday life with the texture and emotion of a symphony, the way Waldie does. A breathtaking progression from his much-celebrated book Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, Where We Are Now is a compilation of Waldie’s most intriguing recent works and an exploration of the meaning of place in Los Angeles, long regarded as the most “placeless” of American cities.
The Autograph Book of L.A.
Explore Josh Kun’s “The Autograph Book of Los Angeles,” the third in his library-based trilogy, examining how signatures represent dreams of fame and the magical transfer of renown between celebrity and fan. Los Angeles—The autograph is the premise for a dream: maybe, just maybe, the autograph hunter will become the autograph hunted, maybe the autograph will double as a magical transfer of renown, and by receiving the signature, one day you will be signing your name when someone asks. So surmises Josh Kun in The Autograph Book of Los Angeles, the third in his trilogy based on the Special Collections of Los Angeles Public Library.
Los Angeles Central Library
Discover Los Angeles Central Library’s captivating journey—a world-renowned architectural masterpiece that survived demolition threats and fires to become an essential cultural landmark. Declared one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, Los Angeles Central Library is a monument to fine architecture and artwork—and, of course, its renowned collection of the written word and its world-class special collections. Los Angeles Central Library and its history are as fascinating as any of the storied volumes found on its shelves. City leaders fought for decades to build a landmark structure and later battled to demolish it, yet generations of Angelenos have watched the building stand tall, survive fires, and endure into the twenty-first century, ready to face a high-tech society that thought it could live without books.
Los Angeles Central Library POPS
Los Angeles Central Library POPS: Celebrating a Century of the Light of Learning takes readers on a 3D adventure through the 100-year history of the iconic Los Angeles Central Library. Los Angeles Central Library POPS: Celebrating a Century of the Light of Learning is a thrilling 3-D adventure through the history of Los Angeles Public Library’s beloved Central Library. Readers will tip, turn, and unfurl their way through the library’s one-hundred-year history, while exploring iconic features like the Rotunda chandelier, sphinx statues, and the torch that tops the building’s pyramid tower. A grand finale “pop” opens flat to reveal the entire exterior of Central Library in all its Art Deco glory. Filled with fun facts and engaging illustration, Central Library POPS is a guaranteed treasure for anyone who’s been touched by the light of learning.
Writing the Golden State
A collection of literary essays about California from some of the state’s most established, and most exciting upcoming writers. Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California explores California through twenty-five essays that look beyond the clichés of the “California Dream,” portraying a state that is deviant and recalcitrant, proud and humble, joyful and communal. It is a California that reclaims the beauty of the unwanted, the quotidian, and the out-of-place. Constantly in search of “the spirit of a place” Writing the Golden State pries into the themes of familial genealogy, migration, land and housing, and national belonging and identity.?Collectively, the essays demonstrate how individuals and towns have weathered some of the social, political, and economic changes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky
Explore this visual biography of Octavia Butler’s creative process where Lynell George reveals how the acclaimed writer fashioned her unique life and art from limited resources—an intimate glimpse into a private genius’s world. A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and “MacArthur Genius” Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe—how to be in the world. This book is about the creative process, but not on the page; its canvas is much larger.
Citizen Kane
A comprehensive history of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs behind the creation of one of the greatest films of all time, Citizen Kane.
2022 BRONZE Winner for Performing Arts & Music, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
CITIZEN KANE: A Filmmaker’s Journey is an updated and expanded softcover of Lebo’s 2016 hardcover that traces the creation of Orson’s Welles’s classic film. This filmland history is itself a sinister tale of conspiracy, blackmail, and Coummunist witch hunts, while detailing the extraordinary rise of Welles, the legend who, at 23 years old, defied the studio system and became a Hollywood icon simply by making the greatest film of all time.
Driving Force
The first book to tell the early history of cars in Los Angeles. Los Angeles’s car culture has shaped the nation’s preferences in transportation, architecture, leisure, and even dining. The story of the automobile and that of Los Angeles have been entwined for more than a century. Driving Force: How Los Angeles Put People in Cars and Cars on the Road explores how the explosive growth of Los Angeles’s passion for automobiles was ignited by an unlikely, visionary mix of entrepreneurs and risk-takers. It owed its inception to the bicycle shop owners who began repairing and selling cars, carriage retailers, and automobile aficionados who ventured into unknown territory to sell a product regarded by nearly all banks and most businesses as a fad at best.
After/Image
Los Angeles lives largest in the world’s imagination. It can be a projection, a solution, a temporary fix, a long-term goal. For Lynell George—and millions of others—it’s simply home. After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame by Lynell George is the result of this award-winning journalist’s years of contemplating and writing about the arts, culture, and social issues of Los Angeles, always with an emphasis on place and the identity of the people who live in—or leave—L.A. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, Lynell George explored place after place that makes the city tick, met person after person, and encountered the cumulative heart of the city.
Los Angeles Union Station
Los Angeles Union Station-opened on May 7, 1939, after days of celebration-was the last great train station built in the United States. Intended as a grand portal to a grand Los Angeles, it was an anomaly, built at a time when America was eager to drive or fly to its chosen destinations. Protected by early inclusion on the National Registry of Historic Places for its iconic architecture, Los Angeles Union Station has had an astonishing and unpredictable rebirth. As the city modernizes its public transportation system linking the culturally and geographically diverse communities of Southern California, Union Station-in all its Mission Revival glory-is suddenly the hub of the country’s newest light rail and subway system, serving hundreds of thousands of people each week.
Bar Keeps
Bar Keeps: A Collection of California’s Best Cocktail Napkins highlights the colorful and fun cocktail napkins from California’s famous restaurants, hidden dives, and most beloved bars.
2022 SILVER Winner for Popular Culture, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Bar Keeps: A Collection of California’s Best Cocktail Napkins is a fun and fabulous tour through the cocktail napkins of the golden state. Hundreds of images of vintage cocktail napkins will surprise and delight anyone who is a fan of cocktail culture, roadside diners, hidden dives, tiki bars, and more. Collector Patrick Quinn highlights some of the most unique and interesting napkins he’s brought together over years of enthusiastic searching.
Kathy Fiscus
In Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy that Transfixed the Nation historian William Deverell tells the heartbreaking story of a girl trapped in a well—a story that transfixed the nation in what would become the first live TV spectacle. Kathy Fiscus tells the story of the first live, breaking-news TV spectacle in American history. At dusk on a spring evening in 1949, a three-year old girl fell down an abandoned well shaft in the backyard of her family’s home in Southern California. Across more than two full days of a fevered rescue attempt, the fate of Kathy Fiscus remained unknown. Thousands of concerned Southern Californians rushed to the scene. Jockeys hurried over from the nearby racetracks, offering to be sent down the well after Kathy.
A Country Called California
A book of fine-art photography featuring the visual history of California.
2022 BRONZE Winner for Photography, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
A Country Called California traces the development of the Golden State from the nineteenth century on, through to its emergence as the fifth largest economy in the world—all as seen through the eyes of photographers whose names are synonymous with fine art photography: Carleton E. Watkins, Dorothea Lange, Eadward Muybridge, Will Connell, Edward Weston, Max Yavno, A.C. Vroman, Mabel Watson, and many more. Author Stephen White, a longtime photography gallerist and collector, has curated the book to perfection, capturing the California that is its own country, the light that has captivated every photographer’s eye.
Los Angeles Before the Freeways
Discover of a lost Los Angeles from an era before the freeways in this beautiful coffee table book from iconic architectural photographer Arnold Hylen.
Finalist, Foreword INDIES, Regional (Adult Nonfiction)
Los Angeles Before the Freeways: Images of An Era 1850-1950 gives a lush, visual tour of a Los Angeles that no longer exists—one of elegant office buildings and stately mansions that were razed in the name of “progress” to build the city’s famous freeways. Featuring stunning black-and-white photography from Arnold Hylen that captures a lost era, the book contains an original essay by the photographer that provides historical background and context for the time period.
From Cows to Concrete
What? Los Angeles was the original wine country of California, leading the state’s wine production for more than a century? Los Angeles County was the agricultural center of North America until the 1950s? And where today’s freeways soar, cows calmly chewed their cud? How could that be? Los Angeles, the capital of asphalt and Kleig lights, was once a paradise filled with grapevines and bovines, so abundant with Nature’s gifts that no one could imagine a more pastoral place. Los Angeles County was the center of an agricultural empire. Today, it is the nation’s most populous urban metropolis. What happened? Where did the green go?
Thomas Mann's Los Angeles
Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles is an illustrated book that explores Nobel-prizewinning author Thomas Mann life during his exile in Los Angeles. After fleeing Nazi Germany, writer and Nobel Prizewinner Thomas Mann found refuge for himself and his family in the Pacific Palisades, a quiet residential neighborhood in Los Angeles between Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean. Mann was one of many European intellectuals who fled to Los Angeles, forming a community known as the “Weimar on the Pacific.” Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles: Stories from Exile 1940-1952 explores Mann’s connections to the city and the network of intellectuals he found there, including writers such as Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley and musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg.
Enchanted Strings
Step inside a world where imagination dwells!
2022 SILVER Winner for Performing Arts & Music, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Bob Baker Marionette Theater has enchanted families in Los Angeles and beyond with delightful marionette performances since 1963. Enchanted Strings captures the visual history of this palace of puppetry from Bob Baker’s earliest days to the theater’s transformation into a thriving hub of creative culture. You’ll meet the remarkable visual artists and craftspeople who worked alongside him, contributing their talents to build the theater, design the shows, and hand-craft over two thousand incredible marionettes. Archival images and ephemera provide a behind-the-scenes look at Bob’s amazing work for Walt Disney and iconic Hollywood films.
Also on View
Also on View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles shines a light on an incredible wealth of stories that lie just beyond the well-beaten path.
2024 GOLD Winner in Regional, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
“For those who love to wander through the corridors of culture and history, this book is an essential guide to the vibrant and wonderfully eclectic museum landscape that makes Los Angeles truly one-of-a-kind.”—Flaunt Magazine
The African American Miniature Museum. The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. The Skid Row History Museum. The Finnish Folk Art Museum. The First Original McDonald’s Museum. The Museum of Jurassic Technology…
Santa Monica Mountains
The Santa Monica Mountains is the only range that transverses a major metropolitan city in North America, slicing Los Angeles and defining it, shaping its hills and its valleys, its canyons and its ocean front. The Santa Monicas is undeniably a range on the edge of the world, welcoming the Pacific into its rocky ridges, almost daring the ocean waves to break at its foothills. The mountains are dotted with mountain lions, bobcats and mule deer, rock singers, movie stars and writers, lilies, oaks and steelhead trout, bikers, hikers and grizzled peaks that seem to kiss the sky.
Harlow in Hollywood
The most celebrated biography of Hollywood’s Blonde Bombshell, Harlow in Hollywood is now updated with rare images and additional details about her remarkable life and its tragic end. At last, the story of how Hollywood shaped a myth and determined a young woman’s reality. A town, a remarkable town, became the backdrop for one of Hollywood’s most incredible stories, a life rife with glamour, pleasure, power, and–in the end–utter sorrow. Her story lives in the pages and breathtaking pictures of Harlow in Hollywood.