Download or read book Sex Death and God in L A written by David Reid and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles is the labyrinth at the end of the American Dream, a city often celebrated, often condemned—rarely understood. In this fascinating and unusual collection David Reid has gathered together the novelists, journalists, and cultural critics who could best debunk the myths, define the truths, and decipher the strange iconography of this “bronzed paradise” of fourteen million inhabitants. Here are reports and reflections on: the new Latin-American and Asian populations of South Central and the East Side and the old establishment in the West Side’s hidden hilltop enclaves; Downtown with its heavily mortgaged office towers held by Canadian and Japanese landlords; the shuttered factories, thriving sweatshops, and gerrymandered “rotten boroughs” of post-industrial L.A.; architecture from Irving Gill to Frank O. Gehry; avatars and messiahs from Krishnamurti to L. Ron Hubbard; rituals of power and abjection in Movieland; and yoga and lust in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles Times and Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn; Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz; L.A. Weeklywriters Lynell George and Rubén Martínez; novelists Carolyn See, Eve Babitz, and David Thomson; architectural historian Thomas S. Hines; and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Jeremy Larner are among those who investigate the mysteries of the city which, as Cockburn writes, is “the only megalopolis of the First World growing at a rate comparable to those supercities—Sao Paulo, Cairo, and Canton—of the Third World.”
Download or read book Blue Dreams written by Nancy Abelmann and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997-09-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The situation of Los Angeles’s Korean Americans touches on some of American society’s most vexing issues: ethnic conflict, urban poverty, immigration, multiculturalism, and ideological polarization. Combining interviews and sociohistorical analysis, Abelmann gives these problems a human face and clarifies the factors that render them so complex.
Download or read book The Failure of Governance in Bell California written by Thom Reilly and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “How could this have happened?” The question still lingers among officials and residents of the small southern California town of Bell. Corruption is hardly an isolated challenge to the governance of America’s cities. But following decades of benign obscurity, Bell witnessed the emergence of a truly astonishing level of public wrongdoing—a level succinctly described by Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley as “corruption on steroids.” Even discounting the enormous sums involved—the top administrator paid himself nearly $800,000 a year in a town with a $35,000 average income—this was no ordinary failure of governance. The picture that emerges from years of federal, state, and local investigations, trials, depositions, and media accounts is of an elaborate culture of corruption and deceit created and sustained by top city administrators, councilmembers, police officers, numerous municipal employees, and consultants. The Failure of Governance in Bell California: Big-Time Corruption in a Small Town details how Bell was rendered vulnerable to such massive malfeasance by a disengaged public, lack of established ethical norms, absence of effective checks and balances, and minimal coverage by an overextended area news media. It is a grim and nearly unbelievable story. Yet even these factors fail to fully explain how such large-scale corruption could have arisen. More specifically, how did it occur within a structure—the council-manager form of government—that had been deliberately designed to promote good governance? Why were so many officials and employees prepared to participate in or overlook the ongoing corruption? To what degree can theories of governance, such as contagion theory or the “rover bandit” theme, explain the success of such blatant wrongdoing? The Failure of Governance, by Arizona State University Professor Thom Reilly—himself former county manager of Clark County, Nevada—pursues answers to these and related questions through an analysis of municipal operations that will afford the reader deeper insight into the inner workings of city governments—corrupt and otherwise. By considering factors arising from both theory and practice, Reilly makes clear, in other words, why the sad saga of Bell, California represents both a case study and a warning.
Download or read book In Other Los Angeleses written by Meiling Cheng and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-03-20 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Will be a 'must read' for anyone studying performance art or the art and culture of Southern California. Cheng is a brilliant and original thinker and writes with a lively, engaged and engaging poetic style through which she attempts to enact the very passion and performativity that she explores in her objects of study."—Amelia Jones, author of Body Art/Performing the Subject "Dazzling on many levels, a major contribution not only to performance art scholarship but more generally to contemporary American art, feminist, and cultural studies. In Other Los Angeleses is going to transform performance studies because of the richness of Cheng's facts and scholarship and the equal richness of her theoretical frameworks and references."—Moira Roth, author of Difference Indifference
Download or read book Working People of California written by Daniel Cornford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the California Indians who labored in the Spanish missions to the immigrant workers on Silicon Valley's high-tech assembly lines, California's work force has had a complex and turbulent past, marked by some of the sharpest and most significant battles fought by America's working people. This anthology presents the work of scholars who are forging a new brand of social history—one that reflects the diversity of California's labor force by paying close attention to the multicultural and gendered aspects of the past. Readers will discover a refreshing chronological breadth to this volume, as well as a balanced examination of both rural and urban communities. Daniel Cornford's excellent general introduction provides essential historical background while his brief introductions to each chapter situate the essays in their larger contexts. A list of further readings appears at the end of each chapter. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.
Download or read book Latino Urbanism written by David R. Diaz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Latina/o population has now reached over 50 million, or 15% of the estimated total U.S. population of 300 million, and a growing portion of the world's population now lives and works in cities that are increasingly diverse. Latino Urbanism provides the first national perspective on Latina/o urban policy, addressing a wide range of planning policy issues that impact both Latinas/os in the US, as well as the nation as a whole, tracing how cities develop, function, and are affected by socio-economic change. . The three sections of the book address the politics of planning and its historic relationship with Latinas/os, the relationship between the Latina/o community and conventional urban planning issues and challenges, and the future of urban policy and Latina/o barrios. Moving beyond a traditional analysis of Latinas/os in the Southwest, the volume expands the understanding of the important relationships between urbanization and Latinas/os including Mexican Americans of several generations within the context of the restructuring of cities, in view of the cultural and political transformation currently encompassing the nation.
Download or read book Planning Los Angeles written by David Sloane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-08 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles isn’t planned; it just happens. Right? Not so fast! Despite the city’s reputation for spontaneous evolution, a deliberate planning process shapes the way Los Angeles looks and lives. Editor David C. Sloane, a planning professor at the University of Southern California, has enlisted 30 essayists for a lively, richly illustrated view of this vibrant metropolis. Planning Los Angeles launches a new series from APA Planners Press. Each year Planners Press will bring out a new study on a major American city. Natives, newcomers, and out-of-towners will get insiders’ views of today’s hot-button issues and a sneak peek at the city to come.
Download or read book The Los Angeles Plaza written by William David Estrada and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2008 — Gold Award in Californiana – California Book Awards – Commonwealth Club of California 2010 — NACCS Book Award – National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies City plazas worldwide are centers of cultural expression and artistic display. They are settings for everyday urban life where daily interactions, economic exchanges, and informal conversations occur, thereby creating a socially meaningful place at the core of a city. At the heart of historic Los Angeles, the Plaza represents a quintessential public space where real and imagined narratives overlap and provide as many questions as answers about the development of the city and what it means to be an Angeleno. The author, a social and cultural historian who specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Los Angeles, is well suited to explore the complex history and modern-day relevance of the Los Angeles Plaza. From its indigenous and colonial origins to the present day, Estrada explores the subject from an interdisciplinary and multiethnic perspective, delving into the pages of local newspapers, diaries and letters, and the personal memories of former and present Plaza residents, in order to examine the spatial and social dimensions of the Plaza over an extended period of time. The author contributes to the growing historiography of Los Angeles by providing a groundbreaking analysis of the original core of the city that covers a long span of time, space, and social relations. He examines the impact of change on the lives of ordinary people in a specific place, and how this change reflects the larger story of the city.
Download or read book Coast of Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2006-02-14 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From O.J. to Arnold Schwarzenegger, earthquakes to rolling blackouts, silicon valley to riots in the street, California state historian Kevin Starr has assembled the history of the Golden Gate State since 1990 to create a vivid snapshot of a state constantly on the edge of tomorrow. Coast of Dreams captures an extraordinary place, from its rich and exceptionally diverse palette of people, cultures and values; to its economy that is larger than most nations and mirrors the economic state of the country; to a political landscape so roiled that a Governor can be recalled scant months after his re-election and replaced by a Hollywood action star. This is a book that is sweeping in scope, intimate in detail and altogether fascinated with the splendor of California.
Download or read book Looking for Los Angeles written by Charles G. Salas and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2001 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Looking for Los Angeles 12 contributors present their responses to the world's newest major city. A variety of perspectives and approaches are covered. The text balances the importance of place with the importance of culture.
Download or read book Golden Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-10 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period--1950 to 1963--when the California we know today first burst into prominence. Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today. Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War.
Download or read book Spaces of Culture written by Scott Lash and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1999-03-28 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Spaces of Culture an international group of scholars examines the implications of questions such as: What is culture? What is the relationship between social structure and culture in a globalized and networked world? Do critical perspectives still apply, or does the speed and complexity of cultural production demand new forms of analysis? They explore the key themes in social theory: the nation state; the city; modernity and reflexivity; post-Fordism and the spatial logic of the informational city. The contributors go on to analyze the public sphere, questioning the reductive representation of technology as a form of instrumentality, and demonstrating how new technologies can offer new spaces of culture. This analys
Download or read book Hollywood Goes Shopping written by David Desser and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aggressive product placement and retail tie-ins are as much a part of moviemaking today as high-concept scripts and computer-generated special effects, but this phenomenon is hardly recent. Since the silent era, Hollywood studios have proved remarkably adept at advertising both their own products and a bewildering variety of consumer commodities, successfully promoting the idea of consumption itself. Hollywood Goes Shopping brings together leading film studies scholars to explore the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between American cinema and consumer culture, providing an innovative reading of both film history and the evolution of consumerism in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Behind the Label written by Edna Bonacich and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-06-28 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a study crucial to our understanding of American social inequality, Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum investigate the return of sweatshops to the apparel industry, especially in Los Angeles. The "new" sweatshops, they say, need to be understood in terms of the decline in the American welfare state and its strong unions and the rise in global and flexible production. Apparel manufacturers now have the incentive to move production to wherever low-wage labor can be found, while maintaining arm's-length contractual relations that protect them from responsibility. The flight of the industry has led to a huge rise in apparel imports to the United States and to a decline in employment. Los Angeles, however, remains a puzzling exception in that its industry employment has continued to grow, to the point where L.A. is the largest center of apparel production in the nation. Not only the availability of low-wage immigrant (often undocumented) workers but also the focus on moderately priced, fashion-sensitive women's wear makes this possible. Behind the Label examines the players in the L.A. apparel industry, including manufacturers, retailers, contractors, and workers, evaluating the maldistribution of wealth and power. The authors explore government and union efforts to eradicate sweatshops while limiting the flight to Mexico and elsewhere, and they conclude with a description of the growing antisweatshop movement. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000
Download or read book Literature and Race in Los Angeles written by Julian Murphet and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-19 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the treatment of the city, specifically LA, in contemporary writing.
Download or read book The City written by Allen J. Scott and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles has grown from a scattered collection of towns and villages to one of the largest megacities in the world. The editors of THE CITY have assembled a variety of essays examining the built environment and human dynamics of this extraordinary modern city, emphasizing the dramatic changes that have occurred since 1960. 58 illustrations.
Download or read book Cheese Sex Death written by Erika Kubick and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From lauded cheesemonger and creator of the popular blog Cheese Sex Death, a bible for everything you need to know about cheese For many people, the world of artisan cheese is an intriguing but intimidating place. There are so many strange smells, unusual textures, exotic names, and rules for serving. Where should a neophyte begin? From evangelist cheesemonger Erika Kubick, this comprehensive book guides readers to become confident connoisseurs and worshippers of Cheesus. A preacher of the curd word, Kubick provides the Ten Commandments of Cheese, which breaks down this complex world into simplified bites. A welcoming sanctuary devoted to making cheese a daily part of life and gatherings, this book explores the many different styles of cheese by type, profiling commonly found and affordable wedges as well as the more rare and refined of rinds. Kubick offers divine recipes that cover everything from everyday crowd pleasers (think mac and cheese and baked brie) to festive feasts fit for holidays and gatherings. This cheese devotee outlines the perfect cheese plate formula and offers inventive yet easy-to-execute beverage pairings, including wine, beer, spirits, and non-alcoholic drinks. These heavenly spreads and recipes wring maximum indulgence out of minimal effort and expense. Filled with seductive photography and audacious prose, Cheese Sex Death is a delightfully approachable guide to artisan cheese that will make just about anyone worship at the altar of Cheesus.
