Looking for a comprehensive guide to the movie, mob, and countercultural influence on mid-century LA? Look no further!
Without Douglas Fairbanks, we probably wouldn't have Jack Sparrow, and our conventional notions of Zorro and Robin Hood would be quite different. This guy is one of the most interesting and underappreciated pioneers.
This is one dense book! Give yourself plenty of time to read and re-read. It's fascinating stuff!
This one is, in a word, sensuous. Be forewaned: It will make you very, very hungry. As a charming and thoughtful portrait of Arab-American Los Angeles, it's unmatched. Despite its 2004 publication date, it's the perfect antidote to everything right now.
To what extent are our actions, or desires, our capacities for good and evil, governed by the way we look? Can taking on the physical form of another person still give is room to remain ourselves? Will we even want to remain ourselves when given the opportunity to make such a transformation? If you're looking for short, easy answers to those questions, this book is not for you.
An astonishing work of subtle but terrifying science fiction, this one takes all the tropes of British culture - boarding schools, council flats, strict social hierarchies - and weavs them into a tapestry exquisite and nightmarish.
A delicious slice of mid-century Americana, full of all the alternating joy and anxiety that faces anyone undertaking the project of domesticity. As with her fiction, Jackson extracts humor and horror from the most mundane places and objects.
As per usual, Larson weaves a tapestry of contextualizing tangeants, intriguing characters, and narratives that at first seem only vaguely connected. Also per usual, he does a masterful job. Dead Wake is engrossing and chilling.
Another page-turner from Larson. This account of the American embassador to Nazi Germany gives you the on-the-ground experience of watching a city you love slowly devolve into the capitol of a terrifying police state.
Dating, cultural appropriation, rescue dog politics, and the perils of pronouncing an Irish name while American are just some of the topics covered in this soulful, conversational and laugh-out-loud funny collection.
This one bills itself as a secret history, but it's more of a dots-finally-connected sort of situation. Polchin brings remarkable sensitivity to this collected constellation of cases that meet at the intersection of Gay and True Crime.
A masterful essayist who has never shied away from making himself a character in his medical histories, Sacks turns in a memoir that sweeps the reader off their feet with its elegance, compassion, and wistful humor.
Savagey funny amd vividly gritty, this mystery takes you through the run-down backstairs, bedsits, and publishing offices of post-war London. The narrator's turns of phrase are positively to die for. This is Spark at her snappy, efficient best.