A book with five chapters revealing a visual history of LA from 1850 to 1965. It's basically pictures and captions. The longest, with eighty-two pages, is 'Paradise 1945-1965' though I'm not sure why LA from 1965, up to at least 2000, isn't considered. I found it very much a pop look at the city with plenty of non-interesting photos, for example, several of folks sitting at tables in restaurants or clubs, smiling and looking at the camera. This type of photo is relevant to the individuals shown but of little interest to anyone else.
There's a bit of everything included (so long as it's available as a picture) commercial, domestic and motel architecture, suburbs, transport, street scenes, entertainment (lots of this) industry and more. Unfortunately, all this pictorial material is just dropped into each spread with no overall book design to hold it together. LA deserves better than this and it has been done in 572 pages. Check out 'Los Angeles: portrait of a city' (ISBN 978-3836502917).
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