This book really helped while my husband and I went to L.A. for a vacation. The book has highlighted the most interesting areas of the city and made the ciy managable. Each highlighted area has its own fold out map with places to see and things to do. This is a great feature for driving around the city because you don't have a huge map to deal with (so chances are you won't wreck the rental car). Each highlighted area has infomation and a bit of history provided. The book also has pages in the back with detailed descriptions of interesting sites, resturants, hotels, etc. This book helps the tourist explore one area at a time. I highly recommend this book, and the metro moon series for the traveler.

L.A. is not a walking city. I loved these maps that helped me navigate the different areas of L.A.. Everything is clear: freeway exits, shopping and clubs districts. Really good guide for hanging out in L.A.

You need 3 books to enjoy LA:
1) this book, the museum companion to LA (what to do in LA)
2) Jonathan Gold's Counter Intelligence (where to eat in LA)
3) the LA/Orange County Thomas guide (how to get around in LA)

You also need to listen to the traffic report, every 10 minutes at the 01, 11, 21, etc minutes on the clock, to AM 980 to avoid our traffic.

LA is a huge melting pot - you can see it in the variety of food and museum collections. There is the netsuke collection at LACMA, Blue Boy and extensive gardens at the Huntington, the porcelain collection at the Pacific Asia Museum, the bookstore (it is ther best in town for art and architecture related books) at the Armand Hammer, the La Brea Tar Pits, California Museum of Science and Industry (free admission) with the BEST science experiments for toddlers. The book also includes lots of beautiful gardens in the area.

This book provides a very useful overview of museums both large & small across the LA Basin. From the Norton Simon to the smallest, you'll get photos of major exhibit items, overviews of what's there, plus the stats & particulars to assure that your museum choice for a given day in not a wasted day. Buy it!

Rockport puts out an outstanding graphic design line. Their series of graphic design books entitled New Design, of which this book is part, features work of what I would call Graphis Annual caliber. For this reason, I think you can buy these books and feel reasonably certain that they will last longer, as relevant resources, than some of the ultra-trendy, flashy, but essentially shallow design books in the market now.

As our friends on the infomercials might say: "You COULD spend THOUSANDS of dollars on a guided tour of global graphic design ca. 1999-present, but WHY WOULD YOU?!" My advice: Snap up the entire City-By-City New Design series while it is still available. (My favorites of the series are London and Los Angeles, but that is merely personal taste.)

I picked up this book because I am a graduating graphic design student who wanted to see what the rest of the world is designing. This book is great for those who want to see what kind of work is coming from great designers on the west coast. Each company is headlined and has its own pages; I found this great in case you want to see a companies work before you send a resume or portfolio to them. Businesses may find this book interesting as to how design is being handled nationally and what each design firm specifically caters to. Overall, I recommend this book to those who are interested in researching different ideas in the design world and businesses looking for a variety of strategies in their design work.

As one of the "characters" in this book, I want to applaud Rod Lurie for his integrity and seeking, finding and writing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about a real life mystery and true tragedy. Jon Emr could have been one of the biggest wheeler dealers in Hollywood history, but the paradigm that was instilled in him with his mother's milk was deceit, larceny and the pure joy of putting something over on someone, led him to what hindsight now tells me was his only possible end. Hurrah for Rod Lurie and the publishers for having the courage to tell this story when just about everyone else wanted to sweep it under the rug. I understand the film rights have been sold, but don't hold your breath waiting for the movie! No one in Tinsel Town wants this true story to become common knowledge.

As one of the "subjects" of this book, I want to compliment Rod Lurie on a fantastic job of investigative reporting. I also want to thank him for honoring our agreement to not misquote me and to not quote me out of context. His reportage of my involvement in the life of Jon Emr was fairly and accurately portrayed from our interviews. This story should be made into a major motion picture. I suspect however that the Douglas family has already taken steps to secure the story rights, or other control, to see to it that this story isn't told to a wide audience to spare them embarrassment. I believe, for the most part, the Douglas family was as much a victim as the rest of us.

Ahhhh, I can't get enough of historical fact coupled with art! Bravo!

In exploring the relationship between Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso I have been absolutely delighted in the information in this text. As well, the works of art and other related details. Thankfully we have this art history text for future generations.

I enjoyed this analysis of LA politics, seen through the rise of minorities in LA politics, specifically the Bradley coalition. His work, about LA, is important because LA is important. The lessons that can be learned from LA's successful minority political coalition, and the lessons Sonenshein draws, can and should be used to measure the success of other big city racial politics. And I'm not just saying this because he was my professor at UCLA.

Sonenshein's dead-on analysis and clear writing make this book an essential for anyone studying politics in America. There's a reason he was given the APSA award. Not reading it is a travesty and you should be ashamed of yourself. And I'm not just saying that because he's my uncle.

The goal of this book is to show that the classic American film comedies of the 30's and 40's are worthy of the best criticism. The author succeeds. If you love movies, and want to think about them seriously, this is your book. The films in it star Hepburn, Grant, Tracy, Gable, Stanwyck. This is a sophisticated book for a sophisticated film audience. The author is one of America's leading philosophers. Cavell brings his knowledge of concepts of friendship, conversation, gender, parenting, sexuality, fun, and adventure to bear on each of the romantic comedies he discusses. The genre explored here continues in GROUNDHOG DAY, FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, ALL OF ME, JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO. This book is serious, and well worth it. It explores everything important to every romantic relationship. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Cavell identifies the "comedies of remarriage," those romantic comedies and comic romances that lit the screens and the hearts of the audiences of the 1930's and 40's. With the mind of a philosopher and scholar and the passionate appreciation of a true fan, he examines classic romantic comedies (and comic romances), including "The Lady Eve," "The Awful Truth," and "The Philadelphia Story." In a classical context (he compares the role of the woods in Shakespeare to the role of Connecticut in "Bringing Up Baby") he manages to illuminate the films without disturbing the gossamer that holds them together. The best that can be said is that he does justice to these lovely films, and makes us understand how smart we were to adore them

I read Saito's book for a course he taught at UCSD in San Diego. I felt that from his book I was given not only a unique and fascinating sociological examination of the interworkings of perhaps the first Asian suburban neighborhood in America, but I was also enlightened to a relatively new notion of 'whiteness' and its effects on the American scene. This book may be read by high school students or academic scholars, the topics of which address some of the most controversial issues in contemporary society.

I came upon the book in an unusual way. I was having dinner with a group of educators and happened to meet the author. Over dinner he talked about some of the issues he came across in his research and I decided to pick up a copy a few days later. I read the book and it surprised me. It was interesting to me because I'm from Hawaii, and the experiences of Asian Americans there, I think, are different, and the text let me experience a major community outside my own. And while I don't see myself as politically driven, I found myself caught up in the alliances/divisions he sees forming in the San Gabriel Valley. As the text examines the theoretical aspects of the politicking in that community, it also presents detailed accounts of actual events that took place during the various stages of grassroots organizing. The depth of the cross-referencing is impressive, but what strikes me most are the insightful, sometimes very personal observations offered to the researcher by participants as events formed --observations that exist almost as sub-themes to the research. He sifts through then traces back lines of political theory through to actual events as residents began to change their community. A worthy read. It has caused me to look at my own community and makes me want to understand more about the forces and processes of change.

I bought this book a few years ago after happening across it on the internet. What a beautiful book. The selections are well-chosen and the photos are unreal. Buy it. You won't regret it.

A goldmine for any fan of Chandler's Marlowe novels and short stories, I couldn't put this book down. It finally gave context to the vistas I had only been able to imagine previously, and I'll never be able to pick up any hard boiled detective story set in Los Angeles without flashing on the images painstakingly chosen to be included in this volume by Ward and Silver. An invaluable asset to any Chandler and noir fan.

He is back. Philop Marlowe the crime fighting gumshoe has returned to fight evil and champion the right and true. Raymond Chandler has written another spine tingling thriller that will surely blow your mind and emerse you in the ongoing plot and lead you to the exciting conclusion of this wonderful book.

It doesn't matter if the private eye's name is John Dalmas, it's still Phillip Marlowe and Phillip Marlowe fans won't be disappointed. Dalmas' life is saved by a beautiful woman who he initially tried to save. I won't say anymore than that because the intrigue, the classic Chandler characters and the atmosphere is all there intact. Elliott Gould is the perfect reader for this type of literature, his reading is cool and crisp and just understated enough for the listeners to lose themselves in the escapist world that is Chandler's.