Angel City Press,U.S. – förlag

A striking and elegant coffee-table book highlighting heritage landscape design 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 plant introductions that continue to this day. For many people, however, the concept of landscape is associated with gardens, especially estate gardens. Yet landscape design reaches far beyond the elite circles of private estates; California Eden: Heritage Landscapes of the Golden State showcases a wide range of landscapes from the professional to the vernacular through exceptional essays by distinguished landscape historians. Entries highlight famous and beloved estate gardens but also more frequently overlooked landscapes such as shopping malls, streetscapes, sports venues, and vernacular sites. From a military installation on the California-Mexico border to the campus of Stanford University and the Japanese American gardens of San Diego, the essays speak to design as well as the challenges of historic preservation of these-often ephemeral places. As elegant as it is informative, California Eden is an essential book for anyone who is passionate about plants.

A visual history of Japanese American car culture in Los Angeles, from gardeners’ trucks and family sedans to hot rods and race cars.

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. Cruising J-Town is driven to explore how these diverse relationships between people and the world of cars have steered the Nikkei community’s American stories across the generations.

Interviews and oral histories chronicle the people and stories behind how Japanese Americans have played vital roles in countless car scenes throughout the region. Cruising J-Town is filled with vintage and contemporary photographs, drawings and ephemera that bring the story to life.

Jerry de Wilde’s gorgeous photography captures a deeply intimate portrait of a lost era—Los Angeles in the 1960s.

Call Before You Come: The Photographs of Jerry de Wilde presents a stunning portrait of an era that lit up briefly but brightly—Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. De Wilde’s photographs provide a rich and intimate look at the American countercultural scene, from “the Farm” where he lived above Warner Bros. Studios and photographed his friends experimenting with tie dye, to wider cultural events and art happenings, love-ins, anti-war demonstrations, Monterey Pop, and the March on Washington. Call Before You Come touches art, music, fashion, and politics, but also friendship, family, and community—an examination of life.

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.

Elements of Los Angeles, the third volume in D.J. Waldie’s trilogy of essay collections centered on his search for a sense of place in Los Angeles, evokes the classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire. In Where We Are Now, Becoming Los Angeles, and now in Elements of Los Angeles, Waldie has assembled a panorama of a city both tragic and intensely moving. Called “one of the most respected contemporary voices on life in Southern California,” by the New Yorker and “one of the most artful authors writing about Los Angeles today” by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Waldie elegantly blends history, memoir, and contemplative observation, providing a portrait of the elements that illuminates the city as a whole.