Lapd Chronicles


Book Description

This book is a seldom-told true story of some of the law enforcement heroes. They worked long and hard in incredibly dangerous and uncomfortable situations, fighting the war on drugs, which no one but them ever expected. They started before there was a declaration of war. From personal and professional experience, they knew that this country, its people, its institutions, its economy, and its leadership in the free world were in peril. They saw the growing menace to our kids, to our schools, and even to law enforcement. Someone had to fight back with uncommon valor and dedication. More than four thousand three hundred people have been killed in the last year and a half. Police stations have been bombed, and officers have been shot and killed in police facilities. Some police officials have been kidnapped, shot gangland style, tortured, and even beheaded. Police and government officials at the highest levels have been the object of assassination and, along with their bodyguards, shot and killed. In one city, thirteen people were shot and killed in one evening and left dead in the street. In another city, sixteen people, including a twelve-year-old girl, were shot. The government sent in the military in large numbers, but the killings continued.




Co-Creative Placekeeping in Los Angeles


Book Description

Co-Creative Placekeeping in Los Angeles is a novel examination of Los Angeles-based socially engaged art (SEA) practitioners’ equitable placekeeping efforts. A new concept, equitable placekeeping describes the inclination of historically marginalized community members to steward their neighborhood’s development, improve local amenities, engage in social and cultural production, and assert a mutual sense of self-definition—and the efforts of SEA artists to aid them. Emerging from in-depth interviews with eight Southern California artists and teams, Co-Creative reveals how artists engage community members, sustain relationships, and defy the presumption that residents cannot speak for themselves. Drawing on these artists and theoretical analysis of their praxes, the book explicates equitable community engagement by exploring not just the creative projects but also the underlying phenomena that inspire and sustain them: community, engagement, relationships, and defiance. What further sets this book apart is how it deviates from the conventional who and what of SEA projects to foreground the how and the why that inspire and necessitate collectively creative action. Co-Creative is for anyone studying arts-based community development and gentrification, given it complicates and enriches the current conversation about art’s undeniable and increasingly controversial role in neighborhood change. It will also be of interest to researchers and students of urban studies.




K9 Chronicles Book One


Book Description

"Serpico shoots straight from the heart. He brings new meaning to the term, "To Serve and To Protect." Serpico tells his CHRONICLE of commitment, hope and loss in such believing detail that you may never look at your own pet in the same way again. Smart, witty and wildly entertaining, Serpico's aim is exceptional." Duwayne Dunham Director: "HOMEWARD BOUND THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY. "It is the ultimate satisfaction for me to be a part of the rehabilitation process and the outcome of balanced dogs like Serpico." Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer




How It Began: A Time-Traveler's Guide to the Universe


Book Description

“Impey combines the vision of a practicing scientist with the voice of a gifted storyteller.”—Dava Sobel In this vibrant, eye-opening tour of milestones in the history of our universe, Chris Impey guides us through space and time, leading us from the familiar sights of the night sky to the dazzlingly strange aftermath of the Big Bang. What if we could look into space and see not only our place in the universe but also how we came to be here? As it happens, we can. Because it takes time for light to travel, we see more and more distant regions of the universe as they were in the successively greater past. Impey uses this concept—"look-back time"—to take us on an intergalactic tour that is simultaneously out in space and back in time. Performing a type of cosmic archaeology, Impey brilliantly describes the astronomical clues that scientists have used to solve fascinating mysteries about the origins and development of our universe. The milestones on this journey range from the nearby to the remote: we travel from the Moon, Jupiter, and the black hole at the heart of our galaxy all the way to the first star, the first ray of light, and even the strange, roiling conditions of the infant universe, an intense and volatile environment in which matter was created from pure energy. Impey gives us breathtaking visual descriptions and also explains what each landmark can reveal about the universe and its history. His lucid, wonderfully engaging scientific discussions bring us to the brink of modern cosmology and physics, illuminating such mind-bending concepts as invisible dimensions, timelessness, and multiple universes. A dynamic and unforgettable portrait of the cosmos, How It Began will reward its readers with a deeper understanding of the universe we inhabit as well as a renewed sense of wonder at its beauty and mystery.




Policing Los Angeles


Book Description

When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead intensifying its power. In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti–police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.




City of Inmates


Book Description

Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration. But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation's carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.




LAPD '53


Book Description

A remarkable portrait of “true L.A. noir” with archival photos from the Los Angeles Police Museum and text by legendary crime writer James Ellroy (Los Angeles Times). James Ellroy, the undisputed master of crime writing, has teamed up with the Los Angeles Police Museum to present a stunning text on 1953 L.A. While combing the museum’s photo archives, Ellroy discovered that the year featured a wide array of stark and unusual imagery—and to accompany the pictures, he has written text to illuminate the crimes and law enforcement of the era. Ellroy offers context along with wild detail and rich atmosphere—this is the cauldron that was police work in the city of the tarnished angels seven decades ago, revealed in more than 80 duotone photos throughout the book. “These crime images resemble the work of photographer Weegee, but, Ellroy argues, they’re superior because they resist artistry; they were taken by police officers doing their jobs.” —Chicago Tribune




The Third Asiatic Invasion


Book Description

Winner of the 2012-2013 Asian/Pacific American Librarian's Association Book Award Winner of the 2013 American Sociological Association's Asia and Asian America Section Distinguished Book Award The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a wave of Filipino immigration to the United States, following in the footsteps of earlier Chinese and Japanese immigrants, the first and second “Asiatic invasions.” Perceived as alien because of their Asian ethnicity yet legally defined as American nationals granted more rights than other immigrants, Filipino American national identity was built upon the shifting sands of contradiction, ambiguity, and hostility. Rick Baldoz explores the complex relationship between Filipinos and the U.S. by looking at the politics of immigration, race, and citizenship on both sides of the Philippine-American divide: internationally through an examination of American imperial ascendancy and domestically through an exploration of the social formation of Filipino communities in the United States. He reveals how American practices of racial exclusion repeatedly collided with the imperatives of U.S. overseas expansion. A unique portrait of the Filipino American experience, The Third Asiatic Invasion links the Filipino experience to that of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Chinese and Native Americans, among others, revealing how the politics of exclusion played out over time against different population groups. Weaving together an impressive range of materials—including newspapers, government reports, legal documents and archival sources—into a seamless narrative, Baldoz illustrates how the quixotic status of Filipinos played a significant role in transforming the politics of race, immigration and nationality in the United States.




Anti-american Terrorism: From Eisenhower To Trump - A Chronicle Of The Threat And Response: Volume I: The Eisenhower Through Carter Administrations


Book Description

'Pluchinsky's first volume focusing on anti-American terrorism is a densely packed and comprehensive look at one of the most complex US national security challenges our nation faces. It reflects the evolving nature of terrorism that has changed with the politics, technology, and media during this tumultuous period in US history. The book is also a thorough accounting of how US policymakers attempt to find solutions to address this dynamic issue. A broad spectrum of terrorism experts, policymakers, and casual reads will undoubtedly find noteworthy facts about terrorist attacks that targeted US interest abroad and at home in this volume. Pluchinsky's level of detail and strong qualitative methodology makes this work an essential desk reference for any serious terrorism scholar.'Studies in Intelligence 'This is a truly magisterial work of scholarship. By pulling all this material together in one place, and by organizing it so accessibly, Pluchinsky has performed an invaluable service for researchers and counter-terrorism practitioners alike … the real selling point is the factual content. Pluchinsky has written the definitive contextual history of US counter-terrorism policy and these volumes, and I confidently expect the two companion volumes still to come, deserve a place in every serious library of terrorism.'Critical Studies on TerrorismOne of the major international security concerns that surfaced in the post-World War II period was the emergence and evolution of international terrorism. The dominant theme in the evolution of this threat has been anti-American terrorism. No other country in the world has had its overseas interests subjected to the level, lethality, diversity, and geographic scope of international terrorist activity than the United States. This four-volume work recounts the development of this threat through 12 US presidential administrations over a 70-year period. It assesses the terrorist threat in the US and overseas and how the government has responded with counter-terrorism policies, strategies, programs, organizations, legislation, international conventions, executive orders, special operations units, and actions. The evolution of the field of terrorism in academia, think tanks, institutes, and the private sector over these 12 administrations is also chronicled.