![]() #Demigods of olympus all books movieAnd he highlights the charismatic characters that preceded the movie stars, like Aimee Semple McPherson, a California evangelist showwoman who combined revival with Hollywood fireworks. He looks at the early activists, like Helen Hunt Jackson who worked to improve the treatment of Southern California natives. The book looks at what the city sprung from – for instance, the missions and missionaries that were established in the area as far back as the 18th century. What will we learn by reading it and why have you recommended it?Īn Island on the Land is narrative journalist Carey McWilliams’s attempt to trace Southern California’s cultural inheritance back to its roots. It chronicles the evolution of Southern California in the early 20th century. Your first choice is a book with that subtitle by McWilliams, the former editor of The Nation, in 1946. “An Island on the Land” is what Carey McWilliams called LA. Los Angeles is not just a city – it’s a megalopolis beyond the imagination of a 19th century citizen. The way the city is sprawling it might soon stretch all the way to San Diego and the Mexican border. It’s a huge swath of urban territory, extending approximately from Ventura County to the north all the way through Orange County to the south. The first time I heard the term used was in the early 1980s but now megalopolis is probably applicable to dozens of US and international cities. Sociologists and urban planners use the term to describe the difference between a metropolis, which is a city with finite borders like San Francisco because there’s water, and a city like Los Angeles, which has the room to sprawl. You and many others call Los Angeles a megalopolis. You could make the argument that New York is five boroughs surrounding the Empire State Building. I think Los Angeles has the characteristics of an authentic city. I grew up in one of these communities, a little town called Lynwood that’s no longer so little and it’s sandwiched by six other communities – they’re all part of the larger megalopolis of Los Angeles. It’s a string of communities connected by the freeway system, and before that rail lines connected it. What constitutes a real city in the 21st century? Los Angeles has always been, as Carey McWilliams called it, “an island on the land”. What is your reply? Is Los Angeles a real city? And she told me in a Five Books interview that “it’s not a city if people spend half their day in a car”. Fran Lebowitz called it “a large city-like area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel”. “Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city”, is what Dorothy Parker called LA. I took the opportunity to explore it as broadly and as fully as I could as a working journalist. Even though I was born in Southern California, the sociology and the mythology of the place has always drawn me in. They could distance themselves from their back-story. They can have all kinds of troubles back East or in the Midwest but if they could make it as far as Southern California they could become someone other than who they were before. As far back as the Gold Rush people have come to Southern California to reinvent themselves. It’s the last stop on the way west you can’t go any further, unless you’ve got a boat. It’s a destination for people who are looking for their big chance or their last chance. What inspired you to make a career out of covering your hometown? You grew up largely in LA, attended UCLA, worked for The Los Angeles Times and wrote nine books about the region. The New York Times called you “LA’s number one muckraker”. Foreign Policy & International Relations. ![]()
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