Southern California Country: An Island On The Land (American Folkways) Mcwilliams, Carey Californiana

xii, 387p. 1st printing. Signed by author on card laid in at title page. Initials on front endpaper, name and date on verso of title page, pencil underlining in Chapter II, cover edges scuffed with stain on front and back, front hinge weak. In his Los Angeles Times project Reading L.A., Christopher Hawthorne called McWilliams' book "the most significant volume ever published on L.A.'s civic and urban character." His reasoning is the book's "effort to document and dissect L.A.'s exceptionalism -- all the ways in which it [differs] from every other big city ever developed" and "the way it knits skepticism with consistent, if always clear-eyed, enthusiasm." McWilliams covers boosterism, boom and bust development, treatment of minorities, religious zealotry, the movie business, architecture, and culture in this critical work about Southern California. [Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2011, Reading L.A.: Carey McWilliams and Southern California's 'vast drama of maladjustment'] [Nunis; 4640] (8-1/2"x5-3/4")