Los Angeles

"A light-hearted and affectionate tribute to Los Angeles. . . . Banham sees not the burnt, lunar landscape of the fiction writers, but a benign littoral where sea, mountains, valleys, and plain form a natural environment that charms as well as challenges its inhabitants. To the historian of architecture, it is the cityscape itself that is most fascinating, providing him with the materials of his strongest attack on the literary conventions about Los Angeles."—Francis Carney, New York Review of Books

"The true language of Los Angeles is the language of movement, says Banham. 'So . . . I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original.' . . . A generous and exhilarating joyride."—Roger Jellinek, The New York Times

"Banham, with his nose for architectural news, was bound to celebrate Los Angeles: it is just his cup of Coca-Cola. The celebration is enjoyable, often shrewd, sometimes superficial and diffuse, as travellers' tales are. This city 'seventy miles square but rarely seventy years deep' defies the limitations of conventional architectural history, the author says, forcing him to describe its topographical and historical context too."—Times Literary Supplement

"Los Angeles deserves to be read today not for its prescience or as a quaint historical artifact, but as a model on how to read any city."—Los Angeles Times Book Review