Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles

by Vincent Brook

Book Overview

Unlike the more forthrightly mythic origins of other urban centers--think Rome via Romulus and Remus or Mexico City via the god Huitzilopochtli--Los Angeles emerged from a smoke-and-mirrors process that is simultaneously literal and figurative, real and imagined, material and metaphorical, physical and textual. Through penetrating analysis and personal engagement, Vincent Brook uncovers the many portraits of this ever-enticing, ever-ambivalent, and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081355456X
• ISBN13: 9780813554563
• Release Date: January 2013
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.2"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary