The new cross-disciplinary essay collection, A Companion to Los Angeles, edited by Professor William Deverell of USC, includes an entry by Leo Braudy on “Culture and Communities.”
According to the publisher:
A Companion to Los Angeles is a unique study of America’s second largest city and the first Companion devoted to a single metropolis. The volume consists of 25 essays, each an original contribution by a writer or scholar, which collectively assess the best and most important work to date on the complex history of Los Angeles. The structure of the Companion allows readers to view the emergence of long-term patterns within the history of Los Angeles. Instead of organizing the essays around discrete, time-specific events, the editors focus on critical themes and broad topics including demography, social unrest, politics, popular culture, architecture, and urban studies which span generations and disciplines. Three photographic portfolios, along with the “contemporary voice” essays that conclude each section, complement the historiographic chapters and provide a truly multidimensional view of the city. Together, the contributions constitute a lively and informed introduction to a history as fascinating as it is complex. The Companion will be an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and a general readership eager to situate the history of greater Los Angeles within a larger body of metropolitan studies and the history of the United States itself.