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David Rieff

Los Angeles Paperback – September 1, 1992

by David Rieff (Author)

4.3 8 ratings

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Writing before the riots of 1992, Rieff found not a city of dreams but a city of bitter contradictions. A city that, like the United States itself, was being transformed by immigrants and refugees from Latin America and East Asia from an extension of Europe to a diverse patchwork of the peoples of the world. This is an L.A. that has never been described before. With a new afterword.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publication date

September 1, 1992
Dimensions

6 x 0.67 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0671792105
ISBN-13

978-0671792107
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This devastating analysis of L.A. as crucible of the 21st century delineates the city where "people and their things are hard to tell apart."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

In "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World," David Rieff looks at a city that was long the epitome of the American Dream and is now, for many, the emblem of the American urban nightmare. Writing before the riots of 1992, Rieff found not a city of dreams but a city of bitter contradictions. A city that, like the United States itself, was being transformed by immigrants and refugees from Latin America and East Asia from an extension of Europe to a diverse patchwork of the peoples of the world. This is an L.A. that has never been described before, "a brilliant and disturbing examination," as Joan Didion called it, "of the America we have not yet faced."

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster (September 1, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0671792105
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0671792107
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.67 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,089,550 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17,768 in Fiction Urban Life
- #69,108 in Sociology (Books)
- #178,271 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 8 ratings

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Elskling47

Los Angeles by David Rieff - recommended

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2005

As a native Southern Californian, I started this book with a good degree of scepticism; I finished it thinking it was one of the most engaging, clearly written books on SoCal I had read in years. If you want to understand LA, and its place in the state, and the world, this is an accessible and enjoyable introduction. LA came alive for Rieff in ways that he didn't always immediately understand or anticipate; he translates his own discovery by weaving LA history, anecdotes, and beautiful word pictures together in a clear, engaging style. You may want to read other books on LA after this - and that can only be a good thing. Rieff will encourage you to ask more questions about LA, and what its development means for the future of urban development in America.

10 people found this helpful

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Terrenz

This book is from 1992!

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2019

I have the book in front of me right now, just accidentally saw it on a bookshelf at the local library. THE biggest shock is that it was written in 1992; probably BEFORE the Rodney King riots! Two years later this town was torn apart by an major earthquake. Now let’s skip ahead 27 years.

With uninterrupted immigration, and 30,000+ people dumped out of jails, Los Angeles is very much a "Third World City". Some of the people from the first big caravan of people from the Rio Olympics, made it through before Trump was inaugurated, and now there is a destruction of toilets, and poop everywhere, because they don’t know how to use them! Just in September (2018) A "six-tine Mexican deportee" killed six people, three of whom were homeless and killed in their sleep...and it barely made the news. Add to that a “party bus” shooting of four people (one of whom died) by the Santa Monica Pier (under which one of the serial killer’s non-homeless victim was found), and the guy who reportedly decapitated himself in an alleged “hanging suicide” in a downtown Santa Monica parking garage (though someone apparently did the EXACT same thing in nearby Culver City). How about the “comic book artist” son of a Canadian billionaire who killed, decapitated, and drained the blood of his baby-mamma in West Hollywood? Meanwhile, Downtown Los Angeles has become the “Homeless Drug-induced Zombie Nightmare”. None of this make so-called MSM news...so the delusion continues...

Really, what has to happen for people to admit California has become a NIGHTMARE?
(The truth, is that “San Francisco is The Capital of Third World USA”.)

3 people found this helpful

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Rashidah Shakir

There are some useful passages in reference to the cultural cluelessness/xenophobia of the ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2018

There are some useful passages in reference to the cultural cluelessness/xenophobia of the LA west side. However, he gets in his own way as a writer. He could have trimmed the fat imo. Example: "It was as if one minute everybody (or almost everybody: when pressed, white Angelenos were ready enough to concede that in black L.A. had been anything but paradisiacal) had been minding their own idyllic business and a nanosecond later were confronting the spectacle of vast stretches of their hometown having been taken over by foreigners, either from Mexico, a proximate part of the world that Americans had always been unwilling to think about seriously, or from other, far more exotic places, so exotic indeed that, except in the context of war-- after all, that was the way most Americans learned where Vietnam was--they were all but completely unknown" (134).

His verbosity can read like a broken faucet: his tap runneth over.

One person found this helpful

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Steve Papkin

Very Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2005

If you are looking a work on the rich diversity of Los Angeles, "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World" is not it. If you are looking a thoughtful discussion of the challenges facing Southern California, "Capital" is again lacking.

David Rieff spent several months in Southern California in the early 1990s, and the only thing he learned was that there was a higher percentage of Hispanics and Asians than in other parts of the country. Not a particularly deep insight. One hour spent driving along Wilshire Blvd. from downtown LA to the Pacific Ocean would have told him as much.

Rieff's conclusion -- "We must love one another or die" -- is extremely weak. Perhaps Los Angeles simply defeated him. He was intellectually and emotionally ill-equiped the diversity he experienced. It is a little surprising how much recent immigration shocked Rieff in the early 1990s. While changing demographics may have been more apparent in LA than elsewhere, one has to wonder to what extent Rieff, a New York intellectual, knew his own backyard. Did he ever venture to the outer boroughs of New York City? If he did, he would have learned that new immigrants were transforming more than just Los Angeles. For example, while Rieff was writing "Capital", Main Street, Queens (little more than a long fly ball from Shea Stadium) was almost exclusively Indian and Chinese.

I also got the feeling that Rieff's exposure to Los Angeles was limited to the living rooms of affluent Westside whites and the barrio of East Los Angeles. I doubt he visited any predominantly black or Asian-areas, much less most of the heavily white areas. If he did, he failed to share it with his readers.

Finally, not only is Rieff lacking in substance but also in style. Much of his prose is turgid and convoluted. His overly dense style and constant repetition turn reading "Capital" into a chore after about 150 pages.

13 people found this helpful

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OGauge

OUCH!

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2008

Major disappointment. Incomprehensible and out of date.

PLEASE. No more editions.

5 people found this helpful

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