Ryan Reft
Ryan Reft is a historian of 20th and 21st-century American history at the Library of Congress. His work has appeared in several journals, including Souls, The Sixties, California History, Planning Perspectives, Southern California Quarterly, and the Journal of Urban History, as well as in the anthology "Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America's New Leadership" and "Asian American Sporting Cultures." The opinions expressed by Reft are solely his and not those of the Library of Congress. He can be reached on twitter at @ryanreft.
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The book looks beyond popular conceptions of the county, now home to more than 3 million people.
The developing genre captured the anxieties of a country caught in an era of fascism, fears of nuclear war, and social dislocation.
The idea of "closing America’s gates" got its start in xenophobic 19th-century California.
The U.S. forcibly relocated nearly 100,000 Californians of Japanese descent, many of them American citizens, during World War II.
A look at Obama's musical milestones and what music is to come under the Trump administration.
Seventy-five years ago, Victor Gruen arrived in Los Angeles and forever changed our collective shopping experiences.
An Olympic gold medalist diver, Lee (1920-2016) fought housing segregation in California and communism abroad.
California has long been one of the Americas' most diverse regions – but its diversity has not always implied racial and ethnic equality.
The legendary designers arrived in Los Angeles in July 1941. The city's aerospace and entertainment industries would help them define the mid-century modern look.
Ronald Reagan won his first election a half-century ago. How can California's 1966 gubernatorial race help us understand the 2016 presidential election?
Celebrity preachers, fundamentalist bible schools, Pentecostalism – these were among the defining features of L.A.'s early-20th-century religious landscape.
The exhibition is on display at the Skirball Cultural Center through Oct. 30, 2016.