Chávez Ravine: 1949


Book Description

The past fifty years have not erased the memories of Los Desterrados, the uprooted descendants of Chavez Ravine. After extensive research, Don Normark has tracked them down in order to share his old photographs and to record their poignant reactions. He has captured the images, the stories, and the bittersweet memories of Los Desterrados in this book."--Jacket.




Stealing Home


Book Description

A story about baseball, family, the American Dream, and the fight to turn Los Angeles into a big league city. Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project. Then, in a remarkable turn, public housing in the city was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy. Instead of getting their homes back, the remaining residents saw the city sell their land to Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now LA would be getting a different sort of utopian fantasy -- a glittering, ultra-modern stadium. But before Dodger Stadium could be built, the city would have to face down the neighborhood's families -- including one, the Aréchigas, who refused to yield their home. The ensuing confrontation captivated the nation - and the divisive outcome still echoes through Los Angeles today.




City of Dreams


Book Description

A vivid history of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped transform Los Angeles When Walter O’Malley moved his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 with plans to construct a new ballpark, he ignited a bitter half-decade dispute over the future of a rapidly changing city. For the first time, City of Dreams tells the full story of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped create modern Los Angeles. In a vivid narrative, Jerald Podair tells how the city was convulsed over whether, where, and how to build the stadium. Eventually, it was built on publicly owned land from which the city had uprooted a Mexican American community, raising questions about the relationship between private profit and “public purpose.” Indeed, the battle over Dodger Stadium crystallized issues with profound implications for all American cities. Filled with colorful stories, City of Dreams will fascinate anyone who is interested in the history of the Dodgers, baseball, Los Angeles, and the modern American city.




Shameful Victory


Book Description

On May 8, 1959, the evening news shocked Los Angeles residents, who saw LA County sheriffs carrying a Mexican American woman from her home in Chavez Ravine not far from downtown. Immediately afterward, the house was bulldozed to the ground. This violent act was the last step in the forced eviction of 3,500 families from the unique hilltop barrio that in 1962 became the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John H. M. Laslett offers a new interpretation of the Chavez Ravine tragedy, paying special attention to the early history of the barrio, the reform of Los Angeles's destructive urban renewal policies, and the influence of the evictions on the collective memory of the Mexican American community. In addition to examining the political decisions made by power brokers at city hall, Shameful Victory argues that the tragedy exerted a much greater influence on the history of the Los Angeles civil rights movement than has hitherto been appreciated. The author also sheds fresh light on how the community grew, on the experience of individual home owners who were evicted from the barrio, and on the influence that the event had on the development of recent Chicano/a popular music, drama, and literature.




The Battle for Chavez Ravine


Book Description




Culture Clash


Book Description

This three-person troupe is unique not only for its imaginative explorations of contemporary Latin/Chicano culture but also for its vision of a society in transition.




The Dodgers Move West


Book Description

For many New Yorkers, the removal of the Brooklyn Dodgers—perhaps the most popular baseball team of all time—to Los Angeles in 1957 remains one of the most traumatic events since World War II. Sullivan's controversial reassessment of this event shifts responsibility for the move onto the local governmental maneuverings that occurred on both sides of the continent. Set against a backdrop of sporting passion and rivalry, and appearing over thirty years after the Dodgers' last season in Brooklyn, this engrossing book offers new insights into the power struggle existing in the nation's two largest cities.




Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture


Book Description

"An important contribution to the understanding of 'modernist' culture in the United States and a perceptive analysis of the achievement of a major American architect, with a European background and an international reputation."--William Jordy, Brown University "This study, part biography and part architectural analysis, is a modern masterpiece of architectural history. The prose is lucid and sometimes elegant--very much like the work of Richard Neutra which it so brilliantly examines."--Peter Gay, Yale University "An important contribution to the understanding of 'modernist' culture in the United States and a perceptive analysis of the achievement of a major American architect, with a European background and an international reputation."--William Jordy, Brown University




White Jazz


Book Description

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns--it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time. Klein tells his own story--his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing--taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive. Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.




Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight


Book Description

"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness