David L. Ulin - Böcker

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.

Thirty-seven LA writers map the scattered and diverse literary landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Stories, chronicles, and poems by both well-established and up-and-coming young writers about how it was to come to LA or what it was like to grow up there, about the ocean and the desert, the entertainment industry and earthquakes, riots and racism, fires and freaks. Contributors include: Jervey Tervalon, Aimee Bender, Benjamin Weissman, Sesshu Foster, Richard Rayner, Jeffrey McDaniel, Amy Uyematsu, Russell Leong, Aleida Rodriguez, Luis Alfaro, Bia Lowe, Amy Gerstler, and others. "The result of Ulin's labors is ...an engaging and satisfying collection of fiction, poetry, and essays about L.A.; the book features mostly unpublished work by both established writers like Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight), Aimee Bender (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt) and Richard Rayner (Los Angeles Without a Map), and by less well-known ones like Russell Leong, Aleida Rodriguez and Samantha Dunn." -New York Newsday "David L. Ulin has assembled the literary equivalent of the Watts Towers: a dazzling dreamscape made from the most ordinary, terrifying, and euphoric debris of L.A. life."--Mike Davis "This regional anthology is, in the best sense, all over the map. Broad in scope and varied in style, Another City offers some of the most exciting, unpredictable writing a reader could hope for." --Bernard Cooper "Los Angeles has been called America's first postmodern city, and David L. Ulin's brilliantly chosen cast of extraordinary writers brings that hypothesis exquisitely to life." --Carolyn See "Another City bids a long goodbye to the exile tradition of writing about Southern California that prevailed in the last century. Its contributors are Angelenos 'native or born-again' who embrace L.A. as hometown and body of fate. Their collective dispatches are confessional, nostalgic, tender, harrowing, often very funny, occasionally exhibitionistic, unfailingly vivid and evocative." --David Reid, editor of Sex, Death and God in L.A. David Ulin has lived in Los Angeles since 1991. From 1993-96 he was the book editor of the LA Weekly. He is a former Los Angeles Times critic and is an Assistant English Professor at the University of Southern California.

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.

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 L. Ulin.