Bibliography of Los Angeles

This is a bibliography of Los Angeles, California, books about the city, county, and the Greater Los Angeles Area. The list includes works of fiction that significantly relate to the region, and have been read as important works about the region, such as The Big Sleep. The list does not includes annual travel books, recipe books, and most sports books.

Nonfiction

General

Carey McWilliams (2009). Southern California: An Island on the Land (9th ed.). Peregrine Smith. ISBN 978-0-87905-007-8.
Richard White (1991). It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-2567-1.
David Rieff (1992). Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World. Touchstone. ISBN 978-0-671-79210-7.
Peter Theroux (1994). Translating LA: A Tour of the Rainbow City. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-31394-9.
Paul Glover (1995). Los Angeles: A History of the Future. Greenplanners. ISBN 978-0-9622911-0-4.
Leonard Pitt & Dale Pitt (2000). Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20530-7.
Kevin Starr and David Ulin (2009). Jim Heimann, ed. Los Angeles: Portrait of a City. Taschen America. ISBN 978-3-8365-0291-7.

Architecture and urban theory

Reyner Banham (2009). Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26015-3.
Mike Davis (2006). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-568-5.
Robert M. Fogelson (1993). The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles 1850–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-08230-4.
Norman M. Klein (1997). The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory. Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-242-4.
Sam Hall Kaplan (2000). L.A. Lost & Found: An Architectural History of Los Angeles. Hennessey and Ingalls. ISBN 978-0-940512-23-8.
Wim de Wit and Christopher James Alexander (2013). Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990. Getty Publications. ISBN 978-1-60606-128-2.

Race relations

Rodolfo Acuña (1996). Anything but Mexican: Chicanos in contemporary Los Angeles. Verso. ISBN 978-1-85984-031-3. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
Lynell George (1992). No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels. Verso. ISBN 978-0-86091-389-4.
Josh Sides (2006). L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24830-4.
Eduardo Obregón Pagán (2006). Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-5494-5.
R. J. Smith (2007). The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Last African American Renaissance. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-521-4.

LGBT

Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons (2006). Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02288-X.
Daniel Hurewitz (2007). Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-24925-9.

Environment

Marc Reisner (1986). Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-017824-1.
Chip Jacobs and William Kelly (2008). Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. Outlook Hardcover. ISBN 1-58567-860-0.

Art and literature

David L. Ulin, ed. (2002). Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology. Library of America. ISBN 978-1-931082-27-3.
Cécile Whiting (2008). Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25634-7.

Guides, architecture, geography

Esparza, Bill (2014). "Tacopedia". Los Angeles Magazine.
Herman, Robert D. Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide (2004) 270 pages
Mahle, Karin, and Martin Nicholas Kunz. Los Angeles: Architecture & Design (2004) 191pp
Nelson, Howard J. The Los Angeles Metropolis. (1983). 344 pp. geography
Pitt, Leonard and Dale Pitt. Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County. (1997). 605 pp. short articles by experts excerpts and text search

Contemporary issues

Abu-Lughod, Janet L. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities (1999) online edition
Dear, Michael J., H. Eric Schockman, and Greg Hise, eds. Rethinking Los Angeles (1996) interprets LA in terms of "postmodern urbanism" model. It consists of several fundamental characteristics: a global-local connection; a ubiquitous social polarization; and a reterritorialization of the urban process in which hinterland organizes the center (in direct contradiction to the Chicago School model of cities). The resultant urbanism is distinguished by a centerless urban form termed "keno capitalism."
Fine, David. Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction. (2000). 293 pp.
Flanigan, James. Smile Southern California, You're the Center of the Universe: The Economy and People of a Global Region (2009) excerpt and text search
Fulton, William. The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles. (1997). 395 pp.
Gottlieb, Robert. Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City (2007) excerpt and text search
Scott, Allen J. and Soja, Edward W., eds. The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century. (1996). 483 pp.

History

Some of the best history appears in the appropriate chapters of the multivolume history of California by Kevin Starr, including Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (1973), focuses on novelists; Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (1986); Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s(1991); excerpt and text search; Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (1997); excerpt and text search; The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (1997); Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950 (2003); excerpt and text search; Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963 (2009) excerpt and text search; and Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003. (2004).

Bills, Emily, "Connecting Lines: L.A.'s Telephone History and the Binding of the Region", Southern California Quarterly, 91 (Spring 2009), 27–67.
Bollens, John C. and Geyer, Grant B. Yorty: Politics of a Constant Candidate. (1973). 245 pp. Mayor 1961–73
Brook, Vincent. Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles (Rutgers University Press; 2013) 301 pages
Fogelson, Robert M. The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (1967), focus on planning, infrastructure, water, and business
Friedricks, William. Henry E. Huntington and the Creation of Southern California (1992), on Henry Edwards Huntington (1850–1927), railroad executive and collector, who helped build LA and Southern California through the Southern Pacific railroad and also trolleys.
Garcia, Matt. A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900–1970. (2001). 330 pp.
Hart, Jack R. The Information Empire: The Rise of the Los Angeles Times and The Times Mirror Corporation. (1981). 410 pp.
Jaher, Frederic Cople. The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. (1982). 777 pp.
Klein, Norman M. and Schiesl, Martin J., eds. 20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict. (1990). 240 pp.
Laslett, John H.M. Sunshine Was Never Enough: Los Angeles Workers, 1880-2010. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012.
Lavender, David. Los Angeles, Two Hundred Years. (1980). 240 pp. heavily illustrated popular history
Leader, Leonard. Los Angeles and the Great Depression. (1991). 344 pp.
Mullins, William H. The Depression and the Urban West Coast, 1929–1933: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. (1991). 176 pp.
Nicolaides, Becky M. My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965. (2002). 412 pp.
O'Flaherty, Joseph S. An End and a Beginning: The South Coast and Los Angeles, 1850–1887. (1972). 222 pp.
O'Flaherty, Joseph S. Those Powerful Years: The South Coast and Los Angeles, 1887–1917 (1978). 356 pp.
Payne, J. Gregory and Ratzan, Scott C. Tom Bradley: The Impossible Dream. (1986). 368 pp., mayor 1973 to 1993 and a leading African American
Raftery, Judith Rosenberg. Land of Fair Promise: Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885–1941. (1992). 284 pp.
Rolle, Andrew. Los Angeles: From Pueblo to City of the Future. (2d. ed. 1995). 226 pp.; the only historical survey by a scholar
Sitton, Tom and Deverell, William, eds. Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s. (2001). 371 pp.
Torres-Rouff, David Samuel. Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781-1894. New Haven: Yale University press, 2013.
Verge, Arthur C. Paradise Transformed: Los Angeles during the Second World War. (1993). 177 pp.
Verge, Arthur C. "The Impact of the Second World War on Los Angeles" Pacific Historical Review 1994 63(3): 289-314. 0030–8684 in JSTOR

Planning, environment and autos

Bottles, Scott L. Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City. (1987). 302 pp.
Davis, Margaret Leslie. Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles. (1993). 303 pp.
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. (1990). 462 pp
Desfor, Gene, and Roger Keil. Nature And The City: Making Environmental Policy In Toronto And Los Angeles (2004) 290pp
Deverell, William, and Greg Hise. Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles (2006) 350 pages excerpt and text search
Dewey, Scott Hamilton. Don't Breathe the Air: Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945–1970. (2000). 321pp., focuses on LA smog
Hise, Greg. Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis. (1997). 294 pp.
Jacobs, Chip, and William Kelly. Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles (2008)
Keane, James Thomas. Fritz B. Burns and the Development of Los Angeles: The Biography of a Community Developer and Philanthropist. (2001). 287 pp.
Longstreth, Richard. The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914–1941. (1999). 248 pp.
Longstreth, Richard. City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950. (1997). 504 pp.
Mulholland, Catherine. William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles. (2000). 411 pp. online edition
Post, Robert C. Street Railways and the Growth of Los Angeles (1989). 170pp.
Rajan, Sudhir Chella. The Enigma of Automobility: Democratic Politics and Pollution Control. (1996). 202 pp.

Hollywood

Hollywood sign

Balio, Tino. Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939. (1993). 483 pp.
May, Lary. The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000)
Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. (1988). 492 pp.
* Smith, Catherine Parsons. Making Music in Los Angeles: Transforming the Popular. University of California Press, 2007. (A social history covering c. 1887–1940)
Vaughn, Stephen. Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics. (1994). 359 pp.
Wells, Walter. Tycoons and Locusts: A Regional Look at Hollywood Fiction of the 1930s (1973) online edition

Ethnicity, race and religion

Abelmann, Nancy and Lie, John. Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots. (1995). 272 pp.
Acuña, Rodolfo F. Anything but Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles. (1996). 328 pp.
Allen, James P. and Turner, Eugene. The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California. (1997). 282 pp.
Bedolla, Lisa García. Fluid borders: Latino power, identity, and politics in Los Angeles (2005) 278 pages; excerpt and text search
Cannon, Lou. Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD. (1997). 698 pp. online edition
Degraaf, Lawrence B. "The City of Black Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto, 1890–1930". Pacific Historical Review 1970 39(3): 323–352. in JSTOR
Engh, Michael E. "'A Multiplicity and Diversity of Faiths': Religion's Impact on Los Angeles and the Urban West, 1890–1940", Western Historical Quarterly 1997 28(4): 462–492. 0043-3810 in JSTOR
Engh, Michael E. Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple, and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846–1888. (1992). 267 pp.
Greenwood, Roberta S., ed. Down by the Station: Los Angeles Chinatown, 1880–1933. (1996). 207 pp.
Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History. (1979). 217 pp.
Gutierrez, Ramon A., and Patricia Zavella, eds. Mexicans in California: Transformations and Challenges essays by leading scholars (2009)
Hamilton, Nora and Chinchilla, Norma Stoltz. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. (2001). 296 pp.
Hayashi, Brian Masaru. "For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren": Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942 (1995). 217 pp.
Horne, Gerald. Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s. (1995). 424 pp.
Keil, Roger. Los Angeles: Globalization, Urbanization, and Social Struggles. (1998). 295 pp.
Leclerc, Gustavo; Villa, Raúl; and Dear, Michael, eds. Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en L.A. (1999). 214 pp.
Loza, Steven. Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles. (1993). 320 pp.
Min, Pyong Gap. Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles. (1996). 260 pp.
Modell, John. The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900–1942. (1977). 201 pp.
Monroy, Douglas. Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression. (1999). 322 pp.
Moore, Deborah Dash. To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. (1994). 358 pp.
Oberschall, Anthony. "The Los Angeles Riot of August 1965", Social Problems, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter, 1968), pp. 322–341 in JSTOR, black riots in Watts
Ong, Paul, ed. The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring. (1994). 330 pp.
Ríos-Bustamante, Antonio and Castillo, Pedro. An Illustrated History of Mexican Los Angeles, 1781–1985. (1986). 196 pp.
Saito, Leland T. Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb. (1998). 250 pp.
Sánchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. (1993). 367 pp. online edition
Sides, Josh. L. A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (2003) online edition
Valle, Victor M. and Torres, Rodolfo D. Latino Metropolis. (2000). 249 pp.
Waldinger, Roger and Bozorgmehr, Mehdi, eds. Ethnic Los Angeles. (1996). 497 pp. studies by sociologists
Weber, Francis J. Magnificat: The Life and Times of Timothy Cardinal Manning. (1999). 729 pp. The Catholic archbishop from 1970 to 1985.
Weber, Francis J. His Eminence of Los Angeles: James Francis Cardinal McIntyre. (1997). 707 pp. Catholic archbishop from 1948 to 1970.
Weber, Francis J. Century of Fulfillment: The Roman Catholic Church in Southern California, 1840–1947. (1990). 536 pp.

Collections of primary sources

Caughey, John and LaRee Caughey, eds. Los Angeles: Biography of a City. (1976). 510 pp. short excerpts from primary and secondary sources
Diehl, Digby, ed. Front Page: 100 Years of the Los Angeles Times, 1881–1981. (1981). 287 pp.
Rodríguez, Luis. Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993); autobiographical novel online edition
Violence in the City—An End or a Beginning?, A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965 Official Report online, report on 1965 black riot in Watts; called the "McCone Report" after its chairman

Miscellaneous

Ethnic Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space
Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles: A Transnational Perspective, 1890-1940
Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression
Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles
The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles
From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture
The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, Scott Kurashige

Fiction

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (1939)
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West (1939)
The Arrangement, Elia Kazan (1967)
The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy (1987)
Speed-the-Plow, David Mamet (play, 1988)
The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, Evelyn Waugh (1948)