D.J. Waldie
D. J. Waldie is the author of "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" and "Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles," among other books about the social history of Southern California. He is a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times.
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The Pacific Southwest Exposition embodied the spirit of 1920s Hollywood: spectacle for its own sake, cheerful vulgarity, and commercial hard sell.
In the 1880s, an author-activist and a once-prominent Angeleno unwittingly constructed an enduring Spanish fantasy past myth for Southern California.
At the border of three worldviews – native, colonial, and Anglo – medical care in Los Angeles by the 1850s blended empirical science, European and native folk traditions, and a large dose of medical hucksterism.
Most tourists once came to Southern California in the winter – and then the All-Year Club invented the L.A. summer.
A popular carnival stunt in 1930s Los Angeles featured beautiful Gloria Graves, buried alive in her coffin.
How close did Southern California come to leaving the Union during the Civil War?
On the morning of April 27, 1863, a boat ferrying San Francisco-bound passengers exploded in the middle of L.A.'s harbor.
Until the Daughters arrived in 1856, L.A. offered few social services for the sick, poor, and orphaned.
Reflecting on the canyon wonderland's millennia-long history reveals something more complicated and darker.
Audiences thronged the rustic camps of the Southern California Chautauqua Assembly each summer. They came to be educated, entertained, and uplifted.
It's one of the few survivors of California's days as the terminal part of the Old West.
The Pike was one of Southern California's largest playgrounds by the sea.