Great Books

2010 Los Angeles/So. California Restaurants covers over 2,100 restaurants in and around Los Angeles, including Orange County, Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. This handy guide contains Zagat Survey's trusted ratings and reviews for area restaurants based on the opinions of diners like you. The trademark reviews and corresponding ratings for Food, Décor, Service and Cost are organized alphabetically in a user-friendly format. Use the indexes arranged by cuisine, neighborhood and special features like ""In"" Places, Winning Wine Lists, or Romantic Places to find the perfect restaurant for any occasion.

Rise and Sprawl: How Los Angeles Came To BeA pictorial history of the world's most enigmatic cityFrom the first known photograph taken in Los Angeles to its most recent sweeping vistas, this photographic tribute to the City of Angels provides a fascinating journey through the city's cultural, political, industrial, and sociological history. It traces the city's development from the 1880s' real estate boom, through the early days of Hollywood and the urban sprawl of the late 20th century, right up to the present day. With over 500 images, L.A. is shown emerging from a desert wasteland to become a vast palm-studded urban metropolis.Events that made world news including two Olympics, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and the Rodney King riots reveal a city of many dimensions. The entertainment capital of the world, Hollywood, and its celebrities are showcased along with many other notable residents, personalities, architects, artists, and musicians. The city's pop cultural movements, its music, surfing, health food fads, gangs, and hot rods are included, as are its notorious crimes and criminals. This book depicts Los Angeles in all its glory and grit, via hundreds of freshly discovered images including those of Julius Shulman, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton and many other superb photographers, culled from major historical archives, museums, private collectors, and universities. These are given context and resonance through essays by renowned California historian Kevin Starr and Los Angeles literature expert David Ulin.About the editor:Cultural anthropologist and graphic design historian Jim Heimann is Executive Editor for TASCHEN America, and author of numerous books on architecture, pop culture, and the history of the West Coast, Los Angeles and Hollywood. His unrivaled private collection of ephemera has featured in museum exhibitions around the world and dozens of books.

Catch a show at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where the acoustics are as stunning as the architecture. See chapter 7. Foldout map, plus detailed maps throughout Exact prices, directions, opening hours,and other practical information Candid reviews of hotels and restaurants,plus sights, shopping, and nightlife Itineraries, walking tours, and trip-planning ideas Insider tips from local expert authors

Drawing on the same standards of accuracy as the acclaimed DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, each book in DK's Top 10 series uses evocative color photography, excellent cartography, and up-to-date travel content to create a reliable and useful pocket-sized travel guide. Dozens of Top 10 lists provide vital information on each destination, as well as insider tips, from uncovering a city's most memorable sights to finding the best restaurants and hotels in each neighborhood. And to save you time and money, there's even a Top 10 list of Things to Avoid. Each Top 10 contains a pull-out map and guide that includes fold-out maps of city metro systems, useful phone numbers, and 60 great ideas on how to spend your day.

Reyner Banham examined the built environment of Los Angeles in a way no architectural historian before him had done, looking with fresh eyes at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its more traditional modes of residential and commercial building. His construct of "four ecologies" examined the ways Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills. Banham delighted in this mobile city and identified it as an exemplar of the posturban future. In a spectacular new foreword, architect and scholar Joe Day explores how the structure of Los Angeles, the concept of "ecology," and the relevance of Banham's ideas have changed over the past thirty-five years.

Streetwise Los Angeles Map - Laminated City Center Street Map of Los Angeles, California - Folding pocket size travel map with full metro system featuring red line tracks & stationsThis map covers the following areas:Main Los Angeles City Map 1:40,000Santa Monica / Venice Map 1:40,000Downtown Los Angeles Map 1:32,000Los Angeles Freeway System Map 1:400,000LAX Access Map 1:88,000Long Beach Inset Map 1:30,000Glitz and glamour typically describe the most populous metropolis in California, as millions flock to its sunny beaches and star-lit scenery every year, but LA is also one of the most prominent museum destinations in the US and a mecca of modern architecture.Los Angeles County encompasses not only the center of LA, but also several separate communities that ring the city like individual jewels in a necklace. Localities like Santa Monica, Hollywood and Bel Air, etc. each have their own atmosphere and attraction for resident and visitor alike, linked by a labyrinth of weaving highways and criss-crossing freeways. Of course the legendary LA traffic jams can make it feel as though every resident and visitor is on the road at the same time.That’s when the LA freeway map inset will enable you to take the next exit and find an alternative route to your destination. You’ll easily find your way from Malibu out to the Valley and back to Manhattan Beach. Detailed insets of Santa Monica/Venice, Long Beach Harbor, Pasadena, Downtown LA and LAX all feature hotels, sites, educational and government locations as well as the LA Metro system.Our pocket size map of Los Angeles is laminated for durability and accordion folding for effortless use. The STREETWISE® Los Angeles map is one of many detailed and easy-to-read city street maps designed and published by STREETWISE®. Buy your STREETWISE® Los Angeles map today and you too can navigate Los Angeles, California like a native. For a larger selection of our detailed travel maps simply type STREETWISE MAPS into the Amazon search bar.

America's #1 bestselling travel series Written by more than 175 outspoken travelers around the globe, Frommer’s Complete Guides help travelers experience places the way locals do. More annually updated guides than any other series 16-page color section and foldout map in all annual guides Outspoken opinions, exact prices, and suggested itineraries Dozens of detailed maps in an easy-to-read, two-color design

A sprawling megalopolis boasting more stars than the night sky, Los Angeles is one of America's treasures. This complete guide to the city's must-sees covers everything from sun-soaked beaches and hot springs, to museums and mid-century architecture, to Hollywood and ethnic festivals. All-new chapters focus on cultural background, while 20 new sidebars offer context and history. New full-color photographs, updated maps, rechecked and (if necessary) rewritten entries, and thorough listings make this the ideal traveling companion to the City of Angels.

From Hollywood starlets to downtown taxi dancers, and from Central Avenue speakeasies to clapboard Venice Beach shacks to Depression-era hobos riding the rails, this volume brings you the masters of the genre penning tales of love, lust, and loss in the City of Angels.Includes classic stories by: Raymond Chandler, Paul Cain, James Ellroy, Leigh Brackett, James M. Cain, Chester Himes, Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Margaret Millar, Joseph Hansen, William Campbell Gault, Jervey Tervalon, Kate Braverman, and Yxta Maya Murray.Editor Denise Hamilton is the author of the Eve Diamond series and the editor of Los Angeles Noir. Her latest novel, Los Angeles Times bestseller The Last Embrace, has been compared to works by James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler. She lives in Los Angeles.

Three centuries ago, the Los Angeles River meandered through marshes and forests of willow and sycamore. Trout spawned in its waters and grizzly bears roamed its shores. The bountiful environment the river helped create supported one of the largest concentrations of Indians in North America. Today, the river is made almost entirely of concrete. Chain-link fence and barbed wire line its course. Shopping carts and trash litter its channel. Little water flows in the river most of the year, and nearly all that does is treated sewage and oily street runoff. On much of its course, the river looks more like a deserted freeway than a river. The river's contemporary image belies its former character and its importance to the development of Southern California. Los Angeles would not exist were it not for the river, and the river was crucial to its growth. Recognizing its past and future potential, a potent movement has developed to revitalize its course. The Los Angeles River offers the first comprehensive account of a river that helped give birth to one of the world's great cities, significantly shaped its history, and promises to play a key role in its future.

Why is the historic center of Los Angeles located where it is, 15 miles from the ocean and 10 miles from the San Gabriel Mountains, on an arid plain? The answer is the Los Angeles River, which once flowed freely across that flat land. In his book, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth, Blake Gumprecht points out that before the course of the river was paved, Hollywood and Beverly Hills were marshland and that in flood years, the river carried as much water as the Mississippi. "The destruction of the river had begun half a century before the first concrete was poured," Gumprecht writes, "when the river ... began to be viewed not as a giver of life or a thing of beauty, but as a dumping ground--for horse carcasses, petroleum waste, and the city's garbage." The river, he adds, was also viewed as a mere vehicle for a commodity, water, and a vehicle that could be improved with the addition of channels, culverts, and reservoirs. Such changes made the wide-scale development of the Los Angeles region possible, but they destroyed the living river. Now, years later, environmental activists are pressing to restore the river to something of its former self--and their efforts, if successful, will again alter the course of regional history. The Los Angeles River has figured widely in many ecological studies of Southern California; in historical work it has figured largely as a backdrop. Gumprecht grants the river close attention as a thing unto itself, one that has affected many other aspects of the area's social, economic, and environmental history. --Gregory McNamee