Every fall TNT showcases some of the newest books that are written by local authors, or of local interest. This year presented challenges for everyone in our community. Authors everywhere have been hit hard by rising costs, declines in sales, and AI-powered algorithms that feed on original content while simultaneously making it more difficult for readers to find that content is doing nothing to reverse that trend. Local authors have also been affected by the January wildfires, many have lost homes, a significant part of their audience and then the venues they count on for events.
Supporting authors helps to ensure that real books, good books and just AI slop, continue to be written, and we can’t think of a better gift than a good book, especially one with a sense of place, and that is the unifying theme of all the books presented here: where it’s essays, crime fiction, cooking, natural history or art and architecture, everything on this list is rooted in the California landscape.
Laura Ackerman-Shaw, Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman: California Mid-Century Designers. Pointed Leaf Press. $46.
Charles and Ray Eames weren’t the only midcentury husband and wife duo to make a mark on Midcentury California design. The official description of this book from the publishers states that Designers Jerome Ackerman (1920–2019) and Evelyn Lipton Ackerman (1924–2012) contributed to the aesthetic of California mid-century modern with their ceramics, wood carvings, mosaics, textiles, and enamels in home furnishings and architectural elements, but it fails to convey the originality and charm of this design duo’s work. The Ackermans designs were colorful, playful, whimsical, and bold.
This book is written by the Ackermans’ daughter Laura Ackerman Shaw, who uses her extensive family archive of photographs and documents to chronicle her parents’ impact on the look and feel of Post-WWII California. For anyone with a fondness for Mid Century design, this book is a pure delight.
Krystle Hickman, The ABCs of California’s Native Bees. Heyday Books. $38.
National Geographic Explorer and naturalist Krystle Hickman offers a bees-eye view into the world of California’s native bees. She has spent more than a decade searching for and photographing her subjects, and learning about their lives and behavior. She has arranged her subjects in alphabetical order, one bee for each letter of the alphabet, and reveals their lives in remarkable detail.
There are bees here whose lives are tied entirely to one species of flower, there are species that sleep in the heart of the flowers they pollinate, and some that build clay towers to shelter their offspring. Hickman is committed to conservation. She has traveled around the world, documenting rare bee species. One of the most remarkable things about her research is that she is committed to collecting only photographs of her subjects, and never harms them.
This is a beautiful and fascinating book.
Arnold Hylen and Nathan Marsak, Los Angeles Before the Freeways: Images of An Era 1850-1950. Angel City Press. $45.
Photographer Arnold Hylen began documenting Los Angeles in the 1960s and continued to photograph the city until the 1980s. He died in 1987. Los Angeles Before Freeways brings together his photographs of a vanished Los Angeles with commentary by architecture and culture writer Nathan Marsak. This is a new revised edition of the book that includes previously unseen photographs and new research by Marsak.
Josh Jackson, The Enduring Wild: A Journey into California’s Public Lands. Heyday Books. $38.
“I was simply looking for a place to camp,” writes Josh Jackson. That’s how this started.”
A spur-of-the-moment 2015 camping trip sparked the author’s passion for California’s vast public wilderness.
Jackson had never heard of “BLM land” (Bureau of Land Management) before landing at a free campsite in the desert on the recommendation of a friend. Ten years later, and many thousands of miles later, he has become a leading advocate for protecting BLM land, and is sharing his love of the more than 15 million acres of public open space that exist outside the boundaries of state and federal parks.
Jackson delves into the history from disposed Indigenous people to historic and modern mining issues. It’s a timely book, since this land and its people, wildlife, and resources are once again threatened by roads, development, mining and other destructive industries.
This is a beautiful book as well as an interesting one, with photography by the author.
Margot Kinberg (editor), LA Xtras: Los Angeles-Style Crime Stories. Grey Cells Press. $12.
Some of the stories in this collection are stronger than others, but on the whole, this is a highly entertaining collection of short stories, featuring contributions by Mark Bastable, José H. Bográn, Sharon Marchisello, M.E. Proctor, and many others. All royalties from the sales of this book will be donated to the California Community Foundations Wildfire Recovery Fund.
Melissa King and JJ Goode, Cook Like a King: Recipes from My California Chinese Kitchen. Ten Speed Press. $24.
This is a joyful cookbook full of unexpected flavors that are rooted in California’s distinctive mix of cultures and abundant and diverse fresh produce, and draw inspiration from Los Angeles’ independent and ethnically diverse restaurants and street food.
Melissa King rose to culinary stardom on Top Chef, and now serves as a guest judge on Top Chef, Food Network’s The Julia Child Challenge, Pamela Anderson’s Cooking with Love, and America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation, and as the host of Tasting Wild, the National Geographic docuseries on food.
Somewhere in between her work as a chef-entrepreneur, television personality, philanthropist, and activism—King speaks on issues of women’s empowerment, LGBTQ+ rights, sustainability, food education, and diversity in entrepreneurship, she found time to write this cookbook.
It’s clear that cooking brings her joy. She writes in her bio that, “From the moment she could see over the kitchen counter, she would spend hours in the kitchen with her mom…the kitchen was a place to play with fire and knives.”
Unlike a lot of high end cookbooks that are more like art books than cookbooks, this one has recipes that can realistically be cooked at home without requiring hours of prep. Many of the recipes feature meat, but inventive vegetarian and vegan cooks will find plenty of inspiration here, too.
Robert Landau and Alan Hess, Art Deco Los Angeles. Angel City Press. $50
Art Deco Los Angeles is glorious. This photographic tour offers a detailed look at some of Los Angeles’ most beloved and celebrated buildings from the 1920s and 30s, including the Griffith Park Observatory, the Wiltern Theater, and the Hollywood Bowl, but also lesser-known survivals. Architectural historian Alan Hess provides context for Robert Landau’s extensive and gorgeous collection of photographs—he’s been documenting LA’s Art Deco treasures for more than 40 years.
This is an ideal gift for anyone who loves art deco architecture but also for those who are interested in design, photography, and Los Angeles’ eccentric and eclectic history.
Claire McEachern, Coyotes and Culture: Essays from Old Malibu. University of Nevada Press. $22.
Claire McEachern teaches renaissance literature at UCLA but she lived for nearly 30 years in one of the last remaining corners of the wild west in the Santa Monica Mountains, where she and her fifth-generation California cowboy husband cared for the family’s hundred-year-old homestead.
This book of essays begins with a harrowing description of the 2018 Woolsey Fire and the death of Millie Decker, the family’s matriarch, and ends with a short reflection of the Palisades Fire, and the the decision to sell the family homestead and move on. Fire provides the bookends for these reflections on the beauty, isolation, and austerity of life on the mountain. Highly recommended for anyone who loves the Santa Monica Mountains.
FYI: Claire McEachern will be the guest speaker at the next Malibu Library Speaker Series, on Wednesday, December 10. This is a great opportunity to hear the author speak and pick up a signed copy of her book. RSVP Required, 310-456-6438, MalibuCity.org/Speakers
Deena Metzer, The Story That Must Not Be Told: A Dead Woman’s Memoir. Hand to Hand Books. $20.
Writer, healer, activist and longtime Topanga resident Deena Metzer was born in 1936 and is still actively writing and pursuing the causes that are important to her. She just published her thirteenth book, a novella that she describes as “a fiction that is not a fiction.” The Story That Must Not Be Told revolves around the 1975 suicide of a young German artist who was studying in Los Angeles at the time of her death. Fifty years later, Ina’s brother Wulfgang approached Metzer for help understanding the death of his sister. Ina had studied with Deena, and although the writer did not at once remember her, the conversation lit a fire in her heart. This book is the result. It drifts from present to past tense, from the present to the past, and in and out of poetry. Ina’s presence is felt on every page, and the book is illustrated throughout with photographs of her and her artwork, offering glimpses into her life and death. This is not an easy book, or one that is recommended for anyone for whom suicide is triggering, but it is compelling and beautifully written.
