About California

First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era?including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall?through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written wit...

The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first publication, the essential portrait of America? particularly California?in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the n...

An iconic novel of the West and an American masterpiece?a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past. Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need. Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture he retreats to his anc...

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren?s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to sal...

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid....He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. This is the Code of the Private Eye as defined by Raymond Chandler in his 1944 essay 'The Simple Act of Murder.' Such a man was Philip Marlowe, pr...

“Available recommendation signals cluster around Sociology, Social Sciences, About, California, NonFiction lists, suggesting this book may fit readers looking for decision-making, behavior, or human motivation. Treat this as discovery context, not a quality guarantee.”

California has always been our Shangrila?the promised land of countless pilgrims in search of the American Dream. Now the Golden State?s premier historian, Kevin Starr, distills the entire sweep of California?s history into one splendid volume. From the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, this is the story of a place at once quintessentially ...

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpellike intelligence to the state?s ethic of ruthless selfsufficiency in order to examine that ethic?s often tenuous relationship to reality.Combining history and reportage, memoir and liter...

"Graced with a bold political and environmental vision, much splendid phrasemaking and a multitude of facts. . . . A truly eccentric contribution."The New York Times Book Review Earthquakes. Wildfires. Floods. Drought. Tornadoes. Snakes in the sea, mountain lions, and a plague of bees. In this controversial tour de force of scholarship, unsparin...

To Janey Larkin, the blue willow plate was the most beautiful thing in her life, a symbol of the home she could only dimly remember. Now that her father was an itinerant worker, Janey didn't have a home she could call her own or any real friends, as her family had to keep moving, following the crops from farm to farm. Someday, Janey promised the wi...

Song of the Swallows, which won the Caldecott Medal when it was first published in 1948, was written and illustrated by Leo Politi, one of Los Angeles? most beloved artists.It tells the famous story of the yearly return of the swallows to the Mission San Juan Capistrano through the eyes of a small child. Julian, the bell ringer of the Mission, tell...

During World War II a community called Manzanar was created in the high mountain desert country of California. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese Americans. Among them was the Wakatsuki family, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston...

A ordinary subway trip is transformed when a young boy happens upon a book about redwood forests. As he reads the information unfolds, and with each new bit of knowledge, he travels?all the way to California to climb into the Redwood canopy. Crammed with interesting and accurate information about these great natural wonders, Jason Chin's first book...

For fans of the I Survived series, this classic rollicking adventure about the California Gold Rush and one determined twelveyearold has sold nearly a million copies!When Jack's aunt is forced to sell her beloved mansion but is still unable to raise enough money to pay her debts, the twelveyearold goes to California in search of gold to help he...

Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortuneteller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard....

The Golden Gate Bridge. The impossible bridge, some call it. They say it can't be built. But Robert's father is building it. He's a skywalkera brave, highclimbing ironworker. Robert is convinced his pop has the most important job on the crew . . . until a frightening event makes him see that it takes an entire team to accomplish the impossible. ...

Substance D is not known as Death for nothing. It is the most toxic drug ever to find its way on to the streets of LA. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, causing, first, disorientation and then complete and irreversible brain damage.The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ulti...

Esperanza thought she'd always live with her family on their ranch in Mexicoshe'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home, and servants. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Esperanza isn't ready for the hard labor, financial struggl...

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, elevenyearold Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearb...

The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin?s bestselling San Francisco saga, and inspiration for the Netflix original series once again starring Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis.Inspiration for the Netflix Limited Series, Tales of the CityA PBS Great American Read Top 100 PickFor almost four decades Armistead Maupin?...