Fiction

Adamic, Louis. Laughing in the Jungle (1932).
Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles (1950).
Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934);
    Double Indemnity (1936).
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep; Pickup on Noon Street; Farewell My Lovely;
   The Simple Art of Murder (stories).
Dana, Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast.
Didion, Joan. Play it as it Lays (1970).
Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia (1987); The Big Nowhere (1988);
      L.A. Confidential (1990); White Jazz; My Dark Places.
Fante, John. Ask the Dust (1939).
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon (1939).
Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon (1929).
Harte, Bret. "The Luck of Roaring Camp"; "Outcasts of Poker Flat", etc.
Himes, Chester. If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945); Lonely Crusade.
Huxley, Aldous. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939);
      Ape and Essence (1948).
London, Jack.
McCoy, Horace. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935).
Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress.
Norris, Frank. McTeague; The Octopus.
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966).
Rechy, John. City of Night (1963).
Remarque, Erich Maria. Shadows in Paradise.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath; Cannery Row;
      East of Eden; Of Mice and Men.
West, Nathanael. The Day of the Locust (1939)

 

Non-fiction

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Banham, Reyner. Los Angeles: Architecture of the Four Ecologies (1971).
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990);
      The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Diaster (1999).
Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1963).
Fulton, William. The Reluctant Metropolis.
Mayo, Morrow. Los Angeles (1933).
McWilliams, Carey. Southern California: Island on the Land (1946).
Milosz, Czeslaw. Visions from San Francisco Bay (1969).
Steele, James. Los Angeles Architecture (1993).
Webb, Michael. Architecture + Design LA (1997).
     outstanding, handy, and well-designed guide to L.A. architecture.

 

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