Translating LA

Peter Theroux describes Los Angeles, the City of Dreams, from a variety of angles: he encounters the diversity of citizens and immigrants, attends movie premieres, smells the incense for sale on the boardwalk in Venice and drives along a six-lane highway.

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At a time when it is America’s leading candidate for the star role of Armageddon, Los Angeles still reigns as the destination par excellence and de facto trendsetter for the United States. Despite its curse of ancient and modern-day plagues—what other city can claim the rights to earthquakes and smog as well as riots and gang warfare?—Los Angeles remains the mythical source for the blood flowing through the American heart: the "pot of gold" that lies on the other coast of the rainbow. In Translating LA, Peter Theroux leads us beyond the rainbow in an affectionate and anecdotal guide to the human centers of Los Angeles. By bringing LA's thousand-and-one ethnic enclaves together with its broad range of social classes, Theroux understands LA by stretching across its fault lines with results that are "surprising and illuminating" (LA Reader). With its genuine sensitivity towards past, present, and future, Translating LA searches the souls of Angelenos to deliver a remarkable commentary on America's most complex and diverse city.