I have so much history with Los Angeles. I grew up a Dodger, Ram, and Laker fan. My family visited LA many times when I was a kid. I lived in West Hollywood in 1987–88. I later resided in Beverly Hills, West LA, and Pasadena from 2007 to 2020. My mother spent a few years in Echo Park when she was a little girl.
I’ve been to concerts, visited museums, eaten out, and ventured to every part of this diverse city many times. When I watch film or television or read books set in Los Angeles, I invariably recognize or have some connection to the city portrayed, whether it’s a street, venue, neighborhood, restaurant, or landmark.
I have read every one of these books, and I believe they are some of the best books about or set in Los Angeles. I plan to add more to this list.
Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties by William Hackman
Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties by William Hackman is my favorite book about art. I often visited the Pasadena Museum of California Art, MOCA, the Geffen Contemporary, the Broad, the Hammer, LACMA, and fine galleries like Pace Gallery.
The book covers key figures and institutions, including Walter Hopps, Billy Al Bengston, Judy Chicago, Richard Diebenkorn, Llyn Foulkes, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Ed Moses, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha, the Ferus Gallery, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Artforum magazine, and many others.
I love the fact that the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon) held the first major American Warhol retrospective and the first Marcel Duchamp retrospective.
It’s sad that so many areas, like Venice, that were home to the artists who made LA a world-class art community are now so commercialized and unaffordable.
Out of Sight is an excellent introduction to LA’s art scene, from the bohemian days of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to its transformation into an art powerhouse that changed the city.
It’s as much a book about Los Angeles as about the art that bloomed there, and one of the best books about or set in the city.
Farewell, My Lovely / The Big Sleep By Raymond Chandler
I’m thrilled that Chandler and I are often on the same page concerning writing and writers, particularly his respect for Orwell, Somerset Maugham, Fitzgerald, and Dashiell Hammett.
No one does detective fiction better than Chandler. His Philip Marlowe is the archetypal hard-boiled detective of literature: witty, tough, and principled enough that readers are always on his side. Chandler also arms Marlowe with some colorful lines.
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” — Farewell, My Lovely
“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.” — The Big Sleep
“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.” — Farewell, My Lovely
Everything about Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely and The Big Sleep captures noir Los Angeles. Chandler’s knowledge of LA’s streets, neighborhoods, people, and shops enriches the page-turning thrillers that produced an iconic detective like Philip Marlowe.
From the crackling dialogue to the captivating characters and plots, Chandler’s books evoke Los Angeles in all its flavors and diversity; these are two of the best mysteries of all time set in Los Angeles.
The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Tycoon is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s brilliant unfinished novel. It might have been his greatest and most mature piece of fiction. Even unfinished, it is a fascinating and fulfilling read. His Princeton friend Edmund Wilson edited the published version and wrote the introduction.
The Last Tycoon focuses on the last days of Monroe Stahr, a brilliant studio executive who knows how to make a popular blockbuster but also how to make quality movies he knows will lose money. Fitzgerald based this character on Irving Thalberg, the boy-genius film producer.
This is an insider’s view of Hollywood in the 1930s and a look back at the old studio system.
Ultimately, The Last Tycoon is a story by a brilliant dying novelist about a brilliant dying producer, both of whom have lost their loves and may have found new loves in the image of their old ones.
It’s one of the best novels ever set in Los Angeles.Angels Flight (Harry Bosch) by Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly, a former Los Angeles Times crime reporter, brings that experience to the Bosch stories. You hear echoes of Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles in his books.
Angels Flight opens with the murder of a famed anti-police attorney, Howard Elias, on the funicular railway known as Angels Flight, which takes you from the Grand Central Market up to MOCA in downtown LA.
Immediately, suspicion falls on someone in the LAPD. Elias was universally hated by the police, and it is Bosch who is assigned to uncover the murderer and potential corruption in the department.
I’ve taken Angels Flight multiple times, coming from or going to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Grand Central Market in all its foodie glory. Angels Flight is the shortest railway in the world and an old-time way of getting around. There’s always something charming about taking that short trip uphill or downhill to new adventures, as long as no one is murdered while you’re on it.
Los Angeles is always one of the main characters in Connelly’s prolific crime dramas.
Mysteries of Bowie and Other Oddities by Joseph Raffetto
The Mysteries of Bowie and Other Oddities is my own book. It opens with the historical fiction piece “Inside Orwell,” about George Orwell and how Orwell became Orwell, told through the prism of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. The second piece is the essay “Bowie and the Berlin Wall,” about why the German Foreign Office thanked Bowie for helping bring down the Wall and how Bowie ended up in Berlin. It also touches on Bowie’s experiences in Los Angeles, the last place he lived before Berlin.
The real reason I included my book is the two novellas in the collection. The first, “The Mysteries of Game Theory,” was reviewed by Kirkus Reviews: “Raffetto’s compelling portrait of a Los Angeles emerging from a devastating pandemic is thought-provoking, and main character James’s struggles to navigate post-pandemic life and society will surely resonate with readers of contemporary literary fiction.” (P.S. I started writing it in 2017, before the COVID pandemic.)
The second novella, “Venice to Venice,” was reviewed by BookLife: “‘There’s no future or past in this world,’ Raffetto writes in ‘Venice to Venice,’ a harrowing story based in Venice, CA, that deftly delineates the interconnected repercussions of war across decades.”
“Venice to Venice” captures the culture and flavors of living in LA through its streets, characters, music, yoga, and weather, and through its connection to the original Venice in Italy.
In both novellas, Los Angeles plays an important part as a setting that brings people together.
See on AudioBooks (3 free books). Barnes & Noble, or Amazon/Audible.
The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson
“Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making.”
Chinatown is my favorite film. I even learned how to write screenplays in the 1980s using Chinatown as the template. I have seen the film and read the screenplay multiple times.
The behind-the-scenes story of the making of Chinatown is almost as interesting as the film itself, which is based on the fascinating history of water in Los Angeles, or rather the theft of water to benefit Los Angeles County and enrich insiders.
The book’s cast of characters (producer Robert Evans, Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, director Roman Polanski, and screenwriter Robert Towne) provides some explosive moments and even tarnishes a reputation or two. It’s incredible the movie came together as perfectly as it did, but with this kind of talent, it’s also not a total surprise.
If you’re interested in how movies are made, and in a fictional history of Los Angeles with a lot of truth embedded in it, you’ll love this fascinating behind-the-scenes tale by Sam Wasson.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
“Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.”
The Library Book is about the Los Angeles Central Library fire and the mystery of how it started. That’s an interesting topic, but Orlean is one of the few writers who could turn it into a New York Times bestseller. Her prose blazes as she delves into the fire and the investigation, then broadens the scope to libraries in general and the history of the Los Angeles Central Library. I was living in LA when the book came out and visited the Central Library downtown, an Art Deco building that’s as much a piece of art as it is a wonderful library.
This is another book that’s about and set in Los Angeles, centered on one of the city’s important landmarks.
Click here to learn more about Susan Orlean and all her books.
City of Quartz by Mike Davis
“In City of Quartz, Mike Davis’ fiercely elegant and wide ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia.” This is the real history of Los Angeles, not Chinatown.
Mike Davis, a historian and urban theorist, details the history of Los Angeles and the power struggle between the rich and powerful and the have-nots. If you want to understand Los Angeles, Davis has researched and written the definitive story of how Los Angeles became Los Angeles.
City of Quartz is still relevant, particularly on the water crisis, climate change, wildfires, and land development.
How a city develops is complex, and maybe every city grows differently, but Mike Davis’s Los Angeles narrative is worth the time and certainly opened my eyes to how Los Angeles was created and by whom.
The Last Innocents by Michael Leahy
“Comprehensive and artfully crafted, The Last Innocents by Michael Leahy is an evocative and riveting portrait of a pivotal era in baseball and modern America.”
I’m a Dodger and baseball fan, but you don’t have to be one to enjoy The Last Innocents.
“Legendary Dodgers Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Wes Parker, Jeff Torborg, Dick Tracewski, and Tommy Davis encapsulated 1960s America: white and black, Jewish and Christian, wealthy and working class, pro-Vietnam and anti-war, golden boy and seasoned veteran. The Last Innocents is a thoughtful, technicolor portrait of these seven players – friends, mentors, confidants, rivals, and allies – and their storied team that offers an intriguing look at a sport and a nation in transition.” – Goodreads
I was a huge fan of sports biographies as a kid. I love the insights and glimpses into these ballplayers as human beings with pasts and challenges they had to overcome.
This is a story of Los Angeles in the sense that so many people come here from somewhere else and discover much more about themselves.
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
On January 15, 1947, the tortured corpse of a beautiful young woman was found in an empty lot. The victim became known as the Black Dahlia.
Detectives and the public became obsessed with finding the Dahlia’s killer, delving into the underbelly of Los Angeles and the Dahlia’s past.
The Black Dahlia is the first of Ellroy’s four crime novels set in Los Angeles, known as the L.A. Quartet.
Ellroy brings authenticity and a deep personal connection to his powerful crime novels. His mother was raped and murdered in Los Angeles when he was 10 years old.
The emotions and trauma that connect Ellroy to the Black Dahlia case make for a compelling read that touches all aspects of Los Angeles society.
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
This novel is filled with the emptiness of Los Angeles, whether it’s the desert, the freeway, or mingling among celebrities. It’s the loneliness of the City of Angels that many have experienced or become lost in.
In this nihilistic character study, we watch a person spiral downward, something so many others have experienced in Los Angeles, but with Didion at the helm, it becomes more poignant and a gut punch.
It reminds me of Bowie’s struggles in LA, and of aspects of the excellent 1980s LA novel Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.
Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe
This is a terrific read full of personal vignettes about the history of punk rock in Los Angeles from 1977 to 1982, told by those who lived it, including John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Dave Alvin, the Go-Go’s, the Zeros, and so many others.
I enjoyed seeing the different parts of Los Angeles that punk rock touched, sometimes bringing different cultures together, bonded by the music being created there. John Doe’s narrative throughout is particularly lucid and informative, but the collection as a whole is well written and curated, making this one of the best underground rock histories I’ve read.
Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham
Here is a holistic view of the structure of the City of Angels. In Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Reyner Banham explains that the city is not a chaotic, sprawling mess with no rhyme or reason. It’s really made up of four environments: the beach (Surfurbia), the hills (the Foothills), the flatlands (the Plains of Id), and the freeway network (Autopia). Banham’s expertise as an English architectural historian leads to his argument that LA is all about movement, a modern, decentralized, car-centric, post-urban architectural landscape. The best way to explore it? Drive. But also, read this book.
Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542–2018 edited by David Kipen
The book attempts to capture Los Angeles through a series of diaries and letters from famous people. When you read words from Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Albert Einstein, Susan Sontag, and John Lennon, to name just a few, you’ll understand that the city is too large to fit between the covers of a book. Locals, transplants, and travelers each saw in it some version of the American Dream, and their observations, discoveries, and insights are as varied as the city itself.
Find the best books set in Los Angeles on Audiobooks, Amazon/Audible, and Bookstores who are not Amazon.
You might also like the best books about or set in Venice, Italy and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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