New Edition: The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City

Posted by on August 13, 2007

[posted from Comm-Org]

From: “Peter Dreier”

Friends and Colleagues:

We’re pleased to report that the University of California Press has just published this month a second, updated edition of The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City, which I coauthored with Regina Freer, Bob Gottlieb and Mark Vallianatos. The book describes and analyzes the history (beginning in the early 1900s), present, and future of progressive politics in Los Angeles. The last chapter includes “A Policy Agenda for the Next L.A.” – a platform crafted by a coalition of progressive groups. The 2nd edition includes a new introduction that reviews the first year of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s administration. The book is available (in paperback) from the publisher at this website: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9799001.html. You can also look at our article in Dissent — “Movement Mayor” — evaluating the connection between the progressive movement and LA’s new mayor. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=656

Some comments and reviews:

“With this rich account of its community and labor struggles, the city of angels–and apocalypse–becomes the city of hope.”–Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“This wonderful book is proof that the American Left is alive and well, especially in Southern California.”–Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities

“An intelligent insider’s account of the construction of the Progressive Los Angeles Network, or PLAN, and the emergence of a powerful labor-Latino bloc that provides progressive L.A. with much of its heart and soul…. A good starting point for any serious student of forward-looking municipal politics.”–James Goodno, San Francisco Chronicle

“A rare book combining history, analysis, strategy and a platform – and it may well be carried out in this decade.”–Tom Hayden, former State Senator, Los Angeles

“Far and away the best single book for understanding the politics of Los Angeles.”–Randy Shaw, Beyondchron.org

” Their conclusion offers the question and challenge: shall we repeat the cycle of democratic setbacks, balkanization, riots, and environmental degradation, or try to achieve the victory sought for in diverse ways to make Los Angeles into a new kind of example? The authors are presentist, without doubt, but they have impressively paid their debt to history and have earned with this book the right to speak in the progressive tradition.” — Philip Ethington, Journal of American History

“As as student of labor and urban studies, I deeply appreciate the book’s illustration of how working people, when faced with multiple injustices that detrat from their day-to-day well-being, will mobilize at different times as unon members, as neighborhood residents, or as members of a particular race or ethnicity…Overall, The Nexr Los Angeles is highly redable; the language is energetic, direct, and free of excessive jargon.” — Nari Rhee, Labor Studies Journal

“The book is an effective rallying cry for progressives…” Daphne Spain, American Journal of Sociology