Secret Stairs
Secret Stairs

Author: Charles Fleming

Publisher: Santa Monica Press

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1595809414

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Containing walks and detailed maps from throughout the city, Secret Stairs highlights the charms and quirks of a unique feature of the Los Angeles landscape, and chronicles the geographical, architectural, and historical aspects of the city’s staircases, as well as of the neighborhoods in which the steps are located. From strolling through the classic La Loma neighborhood in Pasadena to walking the Sunset Junction Loop in Silver Lake, to taking the Beachwood Canyon hike through “Hollywoodland” to enjoying the magnificent ocean views from the Castellammare district in Pacific Palisades, Secret Stairs takes you on a tour of the staircases all across the City of Angels. The circular walks, rated for duration and difficulty, deliver tales of historic homes and their fascinating inhabitants, bits of unusual local trivia, and stories of the neighborhoods surrounding the stairs. That’s where William Faulkner was living when he wrote the screenplay for To Have and Have Not; that house was designed by Neutra; over there is a Schindler; that’s where Woody Guthrie lived, where Anais Nin died, and where Thelma Todd was murdered . . . Despite the fact that one of these staircases starred in an Oscar-winning short film—Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box, from 1932—these civic treasures have been virtually unknown to most of the city’s residents and visitors. Now, Secret Stairs puts these hidden stairways back on the map, while introducing urban hikers to exciting new “trails” all around the city of Los Angeles.

Secret Walks
Secret Walks

Author: Charles Fleming

Publisher: Santa Monica Press

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 159580823X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Secret Walks: A Walking Guide to the Hidden Trails of Los Angeles is a sequel to the popular Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles, and features another collection of exciting urban walks through parks, canyons, and neighborhoods unknown and unseen by most Angelinos. Each walk is rated for duration, distance, and difficulty, and is accompanied by a map. The walks, like those in Secret Stairs, are filled with fascinating factoids about historical landmarks—the original Bat Cave from Batman, the lake where Opie learned to fish on The Andy Griffith Show, or the storage barn for one of L.A.’s oldest wineries. The book also highlights the people who made the landmarks famous: the infamous water engineer William Mulholland; the convicted murderer and philanthropist Colonel Griffith J. Griffith; Charles Lummis, who walked from Cincinnati to Los Angeles to take a job on the L.A. Times; and tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney, who dug canals to drain the marshes south of Santa Monica and create his American “Venice.” Written in the entertainingly informed style that has made Secret Stairs a Los Angeles Times best-seller, Secret Walks is the perfect book for the walker eager to explore but tired of the crowds at Runyon Canyon or Temescal Park.

Hidden History of Transportation in Los Angeles
Hidden History of Transportation in Los Angeles

Author: Charles P. Hobbs

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1625852002

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Los Angeles transportation's epic scale--its iconic freeways, Union Station, Los Angeles International Airport and the giant ports of its shores--has obscured many offbeat transit stories of moxie and eccentricity. Triumphs such as the Vincent Thomas Bridge and Mac Barnes's Ground Link buspool have existed alongside such flops as the Santa Monica Freeway Diamond Lane and the Oxnard-Los Angeles Caltrain commuter rail. The City of Angels lacks a propeller-driven monorail and a freeway in the paved bed of the Los Angeles River, but not for a lack of public promoters. Horace Dobbins built the elevated California Cycleway in Pasadena, and Mike Kadletz deployed the Pink Buses for Orange County kids hitchhiking to the beach. Join Charles P. Hobbs as he recalls these and other lost episodes of LA-area transportation lore.

Shameful Victory
Shameful Victory

Author: John H. M. Laslett

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 081650086X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On May 8, 1959, the evening news shocked Los Angeles residents, who saw LA County sheriffs carrying a Mexican American woman from her home in Chavez Ravine not far from downtown. Immediately afterward, the house was bulldozed to the ground. This violent act was the last step in the forced eviction of 3,500 families from the unique hilltop barrio that in 1962 became the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John H. M. Laslett offers a new interpretation of the Chavez Ravine tragedy, paying special attention to the early history of the barrio, the reform of Los Angeles's destructive urban renewal policies, and the influence of the evictions on the collective memory of the Mexican American community. In addition to examining the political decisions made by power brokers at city hall, Shameful Victory argues that the tragedy exerted a much greater influence on the history of the Los Angeles civil rights movement than has hitherto been appreciated. The author also sheds fresh light on how the community grew, on the experience of individual home owners who were evicted from the barrio, and on the influence that the event had on the development of recent Chicano/a popular music, drama, and literature.

Quiet Los Angeles
Quiet Los Angeles

Author: Rebecca Razo

Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780711236905

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Following from Quiet London, Paris and New York, comes Los Angeles, the next in the series discovering quiet places in the midst of some of the busiest cities in the world. These guides offer both visitors and locals a chance to enjoy the quiet side of these lively cities, to find places off the beaten track, explore enticing small museums or enjoy peaceful gardens. They offer the promise of somewhere to relax and recuperate, to have coffee and cake or a restful spot to unwind, away from the hustle and bustle. Included are more than 120 quiet places to meet, drink, dine, sleep, read or wander. There are evocative photographs and a short description for each location, including travel, access and contact details.

Hidden Valley Road
Hidden Valley Road

Author: Robert Kolker

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 0385543778

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY • The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease. "Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness." —Oprah Winfrey Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

L.A. Under the Influence
L.A. Under the Influence

Author: Roger Sherman

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780816649471

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the American city, property rights involve not one but numerous stakeholders, some connected to the parcel by title and others through less formal arrangements, whether political, economic, or cultural. Negotiations between these stakeholders over the use of property are frequently complicated, even convoluted. In L.A. under the Influence, Roger Sherman contends that it is these negotiations, rather than more commonly accepted factors like history, symbolism, and planning, that not only shape a city but also influence the development of its smallest common increment: the individual parcel. Through a series of case studies in Los Angeles, Sherman applies game theory to scrutinize the behavior of these intersecting private and public interests, revealing an alternative logic of architectural composition. Making extensive use of diagrams, photographs, and a range of negotiation models employed within game theory, including pecking order, negotiated access, multilateral exchange, and tit for tat, he identifies the characteristic features and behaviors of this new spatial logic. For Sherman, these models offer an exciting new role for architecture in urban planning and design. Sherman urges architects to utilize design strategy as a means of mediating between the various stakeholders involved in a project, identifying and creating affiliations between otherwise conflicting interests. The architect's willingness to engage with these negotiations, he argues, has the potential to produce formally and spatially audacious projects as well as recover the social and political relevance of architecture itself.Roger Sherman is director of Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design and adjunct associate professor of architecture and urban design at UCLA, where he also is codirector of cityLAB, a think tank studying contemporary urbanism and its implications for architecture.

Wild LA
Wild LA

Author: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Publisher: Timber Press

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1604697105

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Los Angeles may have a reputation as a concrete jungle, but in reality, it’s incredibly biodiverse, teeming with an amazing array of animals and plants. You just need to know where to find them. Wild LA—from the experts at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County—is the guidebook you’ve been waiting for. Equal parts natural history book, field guide, and trip planner, Wild LA has something for everyone. You’ll learn about the factors shaping LA nature—including flood, fire, and climate change—and find profiles of over one hundred local species, from sea turtles to rare plants to Hollywood's famous mountain lion, P-22. Also included are day trips that detail which natural wonders you can experience on hiking trails, in public parks, and in your own backyard.

The Los Angeles River
The Los Angeles River

Author: Blake Gumprecht

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2001-04-30

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780801866425

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Winner of the J. B. Jackson Prize from the Association of American Geographers Three centuries ago, the Los Angeles River meandered through marshes and forests of willow and sycamore. Trout spawned in its waters and grizzly bears roamed its shores. The bountiful environment the river helped create supported one of the largest concentrations of Indians in North America. Today, the river is made almost entirely of concrete. Chain-link fence and barbed wire line its course. Shopping carts and trash litter its channel. Little water flows in the river most of the year, and nearly all that does is treated sewage and oily street runoff. On much of its course, the river looks more like a deserted freeway than a river. The river's contemporary image belies its former character and its importance to the development of Southern California. Los Angeles would not exist were it not for the river, and the river was crucial to its growth. Recognizing its past and future potential, a potent movement has developed to revitalize its course. The Los Angeles River offers the first comprehensive account of a river that helped give birth to one of the world's great cities, significantly shaped its history, and promises to play a key role in its future.

Wake
Wake

Author: Rebecca Hall

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1982115203

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour de force that tells the “powerful” (The New York Times Book Review) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall’s efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record. Women warriors planned and led revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history. Wake tells the “riveting” (Angela Y. Davis) story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain’s logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the “negro burying ground” uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere. Using a “remarkable blend of passion and fact, action and reflection” (NPR), Rebecca constructs the likely pasts of Adono and Alele, women rebels who fought for freedom during the Middle Passage, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. We also follow Rebecca’s own story as the legacy of slavery shapes her life, both during her time as a successful attorney and later as a historian seeking the past that haunts her. Illustrated beautifully in black and white, Wake will take its place alongside classics of the graphic novel genre, like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. This story of a personal and national legacy is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake.