Los Angeles Times - Books

'A Bright and Guilty Place' by Richard Rayner

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The genre drew from devilish scandals in the City of Angels in which even the city's toughest attorneys weren't free of blame.

A Bright and Guilty Place

'The Ignorance of Blood' by Robert Wilson

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chief Inspector Javier Falcón is back. This time, he's battling the Russian mafia, terrorists, the CIA and a deadly threat that tears at his heart.

The English adore their Spanish holidays almost as much as they love queuing for buses, rooting for native-born tennis players not quite good enough for the Wimbledon finals and, of course, their pints of bitter, their noble dogs and their endless television series about ancient Roman weirdos. So it was shrewd of Robert Wilson to take the entire Iberian peninsula as the setting for his novels, which combine the quotidian details of the police procedural with the somewhat more stirring activities of the international thriller. In essence, he's creating reads for people beached beside the gloomy Thames and counting the weeks until they're noshing tapas and burning their backsides on the Costa del Sol.

'Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963' by Kevin Starr

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The author's multivolume chronicle of the Golden State closes with a wide-ranging, stimulating look at the pivotal years after World War II.

With the publication of "Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963," Kevin Starr -- now university professor and professor of history at USC and state librarian of California emeritus -- has completed his transformation from the state's greatest historian to its indispensable one.

'Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad' by Jeffrey Fleishman

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The writer brings his reportorial eye for detail and experience in the field to a story about a foreign correspondent in Kosovo seeking the leader of a band of Arab rebels.

Foreign correspondent Jay Morgan isn't yet 40, but he is burned out by war. He lost his wife, a combat photographer, to a bullet in Beirut. By the late 1990s, he is in Kosovo, where Serb paramilitaries are skirmishing with Albanian-ethnic rebels. When the atrocity level gets too high -- and Jay is able to predict which atrocities will make Page One and which won't disturb the American public's slumber -- NATO will intervene with bombs and cruise missiles. Until then, he has risks to run, stories to file.

'A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California' by Dorothy Lamb Crawford

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nazis' rise to power in 1930s Germany led to an exodus of artists, writers, musicians and composers, many of whom found sanctuary in Hollywood's fledgling film industry.

To prepare us for the ironies that suffuse "A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California," Dorothy Lamb Crawford first calls our attention to the curious intellectual pretensions of the Nazi elite that came to govern Germany in 1933.

Lena Horne biography tells of a star shaped by rejection, racism

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

'Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne' by James Gavin reveals a woman whose life reflects the civil rights struggles of the times.

According to James Gavin's new biography, "Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne," the legendary singer-actress was never comfortable being an icon.

'The Vanishing Face of Gaia' by James Lovelock

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Too late to go green, says the Earth The British scientist paints a bleak future for humans. Forget buying a Prius: Better move to the north or south pole.

Late this year, if all goes as planned, a 90-year-old James Lovelock will rocket into suborbital space as Virgin Galactic's premier spaceflight tourist. It's a two-hour-plus trip that includes several minutes of weightlessness, during which Lovelock will be able to take an affectionate look at his first love, Gaia -- our blue planet. Lovelock, a British scientist without portfolio but with many admirers, is a friend of Virgin's gleaming entrepreneur, Richard Branson, who enlisted him as a judge in the Virgin Group's $25-million challenge to devise a way to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases to an acceptable level. Lovelock does not really think this is possible. There are too many of us -- closing on 7 billion at last count.

'Roman Passions' by Ray Laurence

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forget toga parties and orgies: Our view of ancient Rome is exaggerated to an extreme, a new book suggests.

In the popular image of ancient Rome, decadent patricians loll idly on couches, eating flamingos' tongues and peacocks' brains to prepare for the nightly orgy, while barbarians rally outside the gates. That well-beloved myth may have been burnished by Cecil B. DeMille and right-wing pundits comparing the current moral climate to the excesses that supposedly led to the fall of Rome -- but it contains very little truth, as Ray Laurence demonstrates in this slim study.

'Duchess of Death' by Richard Hack

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

A biography of Agatha Christie examines in detail her 1926 disappearance.

Agatha Christie, history's bestselling novelist, always had a special relationship with Christmas. When she was a child, it was the occasion of happy memories before and after the turn of the 20th century. Once she became a prolific and popular author, the holiday was a marketing hook for her English publisher, who for decades urged customers to give "a Christie for Christmas."

'The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works' by Henry Waxman with Joshua Green

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The California congressman offers part memoir (drawing on his upbringing in L.A.) and part chronicle of the wheeling and dealing necessary to get anything done in government.

Pretty faces and promising careers tend to flash across our local political firmament with the frequency of shooting stars -- and with about as much effect. But for more than two decades, the most consequential elected official in Southern California has been a short, bald, decidedly mustached congressman from Los Angeles' Westside named Henry Waxman.