A Companion to Los Angeles.
Janssen, Volker
A COMPANION TO LOS ANGELES
Edited by William Deverell and Greg Hise (Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 536 pp., $228.95 cloth)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH Blackwell Companions knows why they come at
such a high price: They are expansive essay collections, meant as a
resource and reference rather than as volumes to be read from beginning
to end. And anyone familiar with William Deverell's work as mentor
and steward to new scholarship at the Huntington-USC Institute for
California and the West and his work on Blackwell Companions to American
History--A Companion to the American West and A Companion to California
History--knows there is no one better to team up with one of the
region's most prolific urban and architectural historians, Greg
Hise, to assemble this magnificent collection.
Long gone are the days when the southern California metropolis was
simply a case study in suburban history. Over the last fifteen years or
so, historians of all fields and specialties have discovered Los Angeles
as a place that raises new questions and provides some unexpected
answers. The multidisciplinary appeal of Los Angeles is apparent in the
list of contributors. Urban, cultural, film, public, and legal
historians have joined political scientists, scholars of race and
ethnicity, photographers, artists, and novelists in this project, and
the contributions are accordingly diverse. Case studies and rich
historiographies stand side by side with Matt Gainer's intriguing
urban photography, Robbert Flick's photo assembly on the San
Gabriel River, and "contemporary voices" on Los Angeles that
pull many of the historical questions and debates of this companion into
the present.
Deverell and Hise organized this companion around a couple of
thematic clusters. The first five essays discuss the history of Los
Angeles as a global city--a central node in the Southwestern
borderlands, the Pacific Rim, and the foundry of a new multinational and
multiethnic identity. The second batch of five essays, which includes
work by Eric Avila and George J. Sanchez, discuss Los Angeles as a site
of social conflict, from Indian uprisings during the missionary period
to the Rodney King riots. Like the other clusters, the third group of
four essays on Los Angeles's politics and economics pushes the
companion's chronological reach considerably past the long
twentieth century. Most intriguing here is Philip J. Ethington's
history of the region--his essay spans 13,000 years. Six essays on
"cultures and communities" discuss movie culture, Los
Angeles's 1960s counterculture, Josh Kun's interpretation of
Tijuana as a "cross border suburb of Los Angeles," and a
photographic illustration of the city's religious diversity. The
final segment includes an essay by Greg Hise and illustrates the various
ways in which the Los Angeles region has been built and shaped into both
unique exception and representative example of urban, geographic, and
environmental history.
This companion will serve graduate students well in their search
for their own voice in Los Angeles history. It will be an ample resource
for educators, for historians in search of a concise collection that
represents the "state of the field," and for anyone who thinks
Los Angeles is worth thinking about.
REVIEWED BY VOLKER JANSSEN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, AND EDITOR OF WHERE MINDS AND MATTERS MEET:
TECHNOLOGY IN CALIFORNIA AND THE WEST
