William Deverell – författare

Experience a year in Los Angeles County, in all its glitter and grit, through a unique anthology that pairs essays by acclaimed writers and historians with custom maps.When many of us picture Los Angeles, we’re actually thinking of LA County. Home to roughly ten million people, the county alone is more populous than forty-two US states. Its eighty-eight cities include places made famous by Hollywood glamor and California dreaming—Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Santa Monica—but also working-class municipalities and the self-explanatory City of Industry. With a territory that includes the Pacific coastline, mountain ranges, and the high Mojave Desert, the county’s landscapes have been touched by earthquakes, droughts, and, of course, devastating fires. LA County is a place of extremes: progress and injustice, innovation and stagnation.Visions of the Southland collects essays by writers, journalists, and historians to create a nuanced portrait of LA that’s grounded in the county itself—its sites, structures, and stories. Contributors—including Gustavo Arellano, Keri Blakinger, Lynell George, Christopher Hawthorne, Michael Hiltzik, Greg Hise, Carolina Miranda, Becky Nicolaides, Susan Straight, and David L. Ulin—delve into LA’s infamous air pollution, movie ranches, prisons, aqueducts, urban forests, SoCal Bohemianism, and more. A custom map by Ezra Rawitsch enriches each piece and grounds the reader in specific locations throughout the county. Unfolding over the course of a year, the book traces the rhythms of politics, sports, weather, and wildlife across this sprawling and enigmatic place.Sweeping in its scope and gorgeous in its design, Visions of the Southland will delight Angelenos, history buffs, urbanists, and map enthusiasts alike.

A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernizationDiscusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers

Most people equate Los Angeles with smog, sprawl, forty suburbs in search of a city-the great "what-not-to-do" of twentieth-century city building. But there's much more to LA's story than this shallow stereotype. History shows that Los Angeles was intensely, ubiquitously planned. The consequences of that planning-the environmental history of urbanism--is one place to turn for the more complex lessons LA has to offer. Working forward from ancient times and ancient ecologies to the very recent past, Land of Sunshine is a fascinating exploration of the environmental history of greater Los Angeles. Rather than rehearsing a litany of errors or insults against nature, rather than decrying the lost opportunities of "roads not taken," these essays, by nineteen leading geologists, ecologists, and historians, instead consider the changing dynamics both of the city and of nature. In the nineteenth century, for example, "density" was considered an evil, and reformers struggled mightily to move the working poor out to areas where better sanitation and flowers and parks "made life seem worth the living." We now call that vision "sprawl," and we struggle just as much to bring middle-class people back into the core of American cities. There's nothing natural, or inevitable, about such turns of events. It's only by paying very close attention to the ways metropolitan nature has been constructed and construed that meaningful lessons can be drawn. History matters. So here are the plants and animals of the Los Angeles basin, its rivers and watersheds. Here are the landscapes of fact and fantasy, the historical actors, events, and circumstances that have proved transformative over and over again. The result is a nuanced and rich portrait of Los Angeles that will serve planners, communities, and environmentalists as they look to the past for clues, if not blueprints, for enhancing the quality and viability of cities.

This volume of original essays by leading scholars is an innovative, thorough introduction to the history and culture of California. Includes 30 essays by leading scholars in the fieldEssays range widely across perspectives, including political, social, economic, and environmental historyEssays with similar approaches are paired and grouped to work as individual pieces and as companions to each other throughout the textProduced in association with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

This Companion contains 25 original essays by writers and scholars who present an expert assessment of the best and most important work to date on the complex history of Los Angeles. The first Companion providing a historical survey of Los Angeles, incorporating critical, multi-disciplinary themes and innovative scholarshipFeatures essays from a range of disciplines, including history, political science, cultural studies, and geographyPhoto essays and ‘contemporary voice’ sections combine with traditional historiographic essays to provide a multi-dimensional view of this vibrant and diverse cityEssays cover the key topics in the field within a thematic structure, including demography, social unrest, politics, popular culture, architecture, and urban studies

A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernizationDiscusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers

This volume of original essays by leading scholars is an innovative, thorough introduction to the history and culture of California. Includes 30 essays by leading scholars in the fieldEssays range widely across perspectives, including political, social, economic, and environmental historyEssays with similar approaches are paired and grouped to work as individual pieces and as companions to each other throughout the textProduced in association with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

The aim of this collection of essays is to stress the cultural aspects of the Jewish experience of coming to, and living in, the Golden State. The contributors explore how the Jews who settled in California helped shape the state's culture and were, in turn, molded by cultural influences that were uniquely Californian. While this volume looks at the Jewish experience in California in general, particular emphasis is placed on Southern California where the Casden Institute, originators of The Jewish Role in American Life series of annual reviews, is based. The collection presents choice snapshots of how life developed and changed for Jews in California as California itself evolved and grew.