Beyond L.A.'s self-promotional glitter is a hotbed of writers, bohemians, mad poets, exiles and refugees from every form of oppression -- and "Literary L.A." details their fascinating histories. The first book to chronicle the world-class writers who called Los Angeles home Lionel Rolfe's "Literary L.A." introduced the literary world to a neglected universe of writing, to major critical acclaim. Now, AirStream Books is proud to present this e-book version of "Literary L.A." to a new generation of readers. New to this edition are: bohemian and apocalyptic streams in L.A. writing • the thriving coffeehouse scene, including the new L.A. poets • additional chapters by noted archivist and literary essayist John Ahouse. Among the transients, literary gypsies, bohemians and writers in imposed or self-imposed exile whose stories are told in "Literary L.A." are Oscar Zeta Acosta, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey, Carey McWilliams, Charles Lummis, Jacob Zeitlin, Louis Adamic, Nathanel West, Robinson Jeffers, Malcolm Lowry, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and many others. The first edition of "Literary L.A." was published by Chronicle Books in 1981. An expanded edition, on which this electronic edition is based, was published by California Classics Books in 2002. A documentary movie based on the book by KO Pictures is forthcoming.
Please accept for your thoughtful consideration THE MISADVENTURES OF ARI MENDELSOHN. This picaresque memoir by noted author and journalist LIONEL ROLFE recounts the sexual and political travails of the irascible, blacklisted title character, a reporter still harboring his besieged idealistic belief in humanity's innate goodness and America's dubious potential for good amid a reality of avarice, pragmatism, cynicism, and materialism.With his usual sharp self-deprecating wit and affable honesty, ROLFE describes Ari's astonishing array of encounters that run the gambit from the hilarious to the horrific, from the astute to the bewildering, from the desirous to the dangerous, from the death-defying to the life-affirming. As he searches for purpose in a life of drudgery and debacle, along the way Ari must contend with a Military Academy captain with an all-too-avid interests in the students under his “command”; old-time police reporters and the corrupt detectives whom they depend on for the inside scoop; old Stalinists and labor radicals; the long-established, well-entrenched defenders of America's conservative, God-loving majority; porn stars and gurus false and true and a holographic pin-up; and the all-too-real one-dimensional political operators and kingpins.From losing his virginity; from the coffeehouses of the far left to the centerpiece of Los Angeles's abiding racism, the corrupt violent police headquarters known as the “Glass House,” under the hard-line rule of virulent racist Police Chief William Parker; from experiencing the Sierra God Machine to discovering love in a faraway land, the antithesis of America; from the freeways of the populace to the ocean-side estates of media moguls; from his spiraling descent to his awakening and retreat (which is also an advance of sorts), Ari is not only an entertaining and memorable creation, he is also a representative (though unwilling) “any”-man, caught in unfulfilling employment within a world of grandiosity and absurdity.Having worked full-time since age twenty at some of its most prestigious newspapers (the Los Angeles Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle), ten-year editor of B'nai Brith Messenger (the second oldest newspaper in Los Angeles) and an editor for Psychology Today, as well as the author of six books, including the classic LITERARY L.A., ROLFE has created a work that explores the misadventurous merits of our own lives.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “With bawdy wit, Lionel Rolfe holds a fun house mirror to L.A. through his concupiscent, picaresque, perpetually incorrect character, Ari Mendelsohn. Call it: Casanova-meets-Candide-under-the-Hollywood-sign. “Ari possesses a kind of innocence in his relentless horn-dogginess (Maybe that's Bill Clinton's charm. A few of Philip Roth's characters also come to mind.) Ari Mendelsohn marches forward, dick-in-hand - ever hopeful like some Jewish Candide - into the perpetual, cultural earthquakes and mudslides of Los Angeles, slipping and sliding and getting blowjobs along the fault lines of L.A.'s money grubber and magnificent morons. He's an accidental Casanova lost in a city of libertines. “Anyway, in that light, he is fun reading and worth the cover price.” -- Umberto Tosi.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** OVER 35,000 COPIES SOLD *** In the 1870s, Dr. Wilhelm Schuessler revolutionized German homeopathic medicine. A homeopathic physician, Dr. Schuessler believed that the approximately 2,000 remedies of his day could be simplified. After the doctor determined that effective ingredients in the remedies were their mineral constituents, he isolated these components and developed twelve individual remedies—the Schuessler cell salts—that are essential to maintaining health. Homeopathic Cell Salt Remedies is a simple yet comprehensive guide to the history, theory, and use of cell salts. Part One provides a history of Dr. Schuessler’s discovery, a brief overview of each cell salt, and comprehensive instructions for using the remedies. Part Two features a Simplified Remedy Guide offering an A-to-Z listing of common disorders and their remedies. This is followed by a detailed discussion of each of the cell salts. Rounding out the book are a chapter on using cell salts for youth and beauty, a glossary of terms, and a resource list of firms that sell the remedies. At a time when millions are rediscovering the many benefits of homeopathic medicine, Homeopathic Cell Salt Remedies provides a valuable introduction to the safe and effective use of cell salts.
This fascinating account of Los Angeles’ buried past tells the story of Job Harriman, a former minister turned union organizer and attorney, who in 1911 was narrowly defeated as mayor of Los Angeles running on the Socialist ticket. Behind his defeat lay an unthinkably brutal, stop-at-nothing campaign headed by Los Angeles’ de facto political boss, General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Harriman’s progressive mayoral campaign represented an epic battle for the future of Los Angeles against the bitterly reactionary forces of Otis and his backers. The authors amply demonstrate that Otis was the victor in this contest, and how that victory explains much about why Los Angeles is the way it is today. "Bread and Hyacinths" follows Harriman through his childhood as an Indiana farm boy, through his formative years as a union organizer to his emergence as a key figure in the pivotal era of American socialism. It eloquently describes his lifelong optimism and determination in the face of poor health, financial woes, and personal and political troubles. Viewed in perspective against the backdrop of a city - and a nation - torn by labor strife and political corruption, Harriman emerges as a crucial, if ultimately marginalized, figure in American political history. Viewed in the light of today's uncertain economy and political unrest, this period of California history can be seen as a disturbing omen of things to come. "Bread and Hyacinths" has been optioned as a motion picture by director Paul Haggis ("Crash", "Billion Dollar Baby", "Flags of Our Fathers"). This brief, useful book illuminates an obscure chapter in the history of Los Angeles and America’s socialist movement...The book also serves as a corrective to the Times’s distorted history of the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony, a socialist community founded by Harriman in Southern Calfornia’s Antelope Valley. – Los Angeles Times This slender but potent book draws us into an early and unfamiliar era of Southern California, when Los Angeles seemed more like Charcoal Alley than Lotusland...[A] fine example of what regional publishing can and ought to be: vigorous, knowing, committed and unafraid, even if a bit eccentric. – Los Angeles Daily News
Devastated that his wife and writing partner of 25 years left him on the eve of the new millennium, Lionel Rolfe set pen to paper in an attempt to make sense of the dance between men and women. But, as he began writing, a deeper understanding took hold the Grim Reaper stopped by. And not just once, but again and again. The deaths of Carl Kessler, the unrepentant Stalinist and trade union organizer, and Nieson Himmel, a close friend and veteran nighttime police reporter for the Los Angeles Times, hit him hard. But it was the death of Rolfe's uncle, the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin, that turned his life upside down. In the end, the emotional ordeal was a blessing in disguise. After all, without it, the world would not have DEATH AND REDEMPTION IN LONDON & L.A. an engrossing tale of one mans search for redemption in the only place it has ever been found within the soul. Come along with the author as he strives to deal with a life half-lived and dreams perpetually deferred. Youll laugh, youll cry. But most of all, youll see the world through the eyes of a man truly in touch with his sensibilities; a man wholl change your worldview forever.
In 16 compelling essays about American culture & politics, this author, a scion of the world renowned musical Menuhin family, mixes it up with royalty, revolutionaries, murderers, celebrities & visionaries in a journey that juxtaposes his uncle - classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin - & Frank Zappa. For four decades the author has roamed the underground, writing extensively on his own unique & endearing vision. He has written for & worked at the Los Angeles Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle & Psychology Today. His work is often nationally syndicated & anthologized in important books such as Unknown California: Classic & Contemporary Writing on California Culture, Society, History & Politics (Macmillan) & On Bohemia: The Code of the Self-Exiled (Transaction). The author's eclectic musical world includes giants like Woody Guthrie, Janis Joplin, Darius Milhaud, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Gregor Piatigorsky, Joseph Szigeti, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Arnold Schoenberg, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee & Hoyt Axton. But music isn't everything. As author of the classic Literary L. A. (Chronicle Books) & In Search of Literary L. A. (California Classics Books), he ranges among such nobles as Mark Twain, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Upton Sinclair, Thomas Mann, Howard Fast, Malcolm Lowry, Carl Sandburg & his own godmother, Willa Cather. As a journalist, he has written with intimate knowledge about Cleveland Amory, Herb Caen, Warren Hinckle & General Harrison Gray Otis, founder of the Los Angeles Times. His political coverage is massive, ranging from Abba Eban to Ronald Regan to Jim Garrison & the Kennedys. In the meanwhile, folks like Ed Asner, Ed Sullivan & Oliver Stone populate his Hollywood narrative. These tales collectively rip the masks off the politics, culture & society of the last four decades of the 20th century. Readers will meet some strange, shadowy figures, but also some beautiful visionaries.
LITERARY LA Expanded from the original classic & featuring the coffeehouse scene then and now. Los Angeles as a hotbed of writers, bohemians, mad poets, exiles and refugees from every form of political and emotional oppression surfaces again with the third edition of Literary LA. There has always been another side to the self-promotional glitter the city is best known for, and this book tells that story. Literary LA was originally published in 1981 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco. A revised edition, In Search of Literary LA, appeared ten years later. To mark the millennium, California Classics expanded the study, with new emphasis on the bohemian and apocalyptic streams in Los Angeles writing, and including additional chapters by John Ahouse and Julia Stein. This is the full text of that expanded edition, released under the imprint of Boryanabooks. Those who helped to weave this literary tapestry were, like many who take hold in Los Angeles, often transients, literary gypsies, bohemians and writers in imposed or self-imposed exile. Among the authors and book people discussed, frequently through the haze of one of the city's coffeehouses, are Oscar Zeta Acosta, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey, Carey McWilliams, Charles Lummis, Jacob Zeitlin, Louis Adamic, Nathanael West, Robinson Jeffers, Malcolm Lowry, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and many others. Journalist and author Lionel Rolfe grew up in European-influenced surroundings in Los Angeles. Through the early postwar years, his mother, the late pianist Yaltah Menuhin, hosted an at-home salon that offered a solace for musicians and other creative artists-in-exile. Much of what Rolfe writes has its roots in his own childhood impressions or the recollections of family members and visitors to his boyhood home.
Beyond L.A.'s self-promotional glitter is a hotbed of writers, bohemians, mad poets, exiles and refugees from every form of oppression -- and "Literary L.A." details their fascinating histories. The first book to chronicle the world-class writers who called Los Angeles home Lionel Rolfe's "Literary L.A." introduced the literary world to a neglected universe of writing, to major critical acclaim. Now, AirStream Books is proud to present this e-book version of "Literary L.A." to a new generation of readers. New to this edition are: bohemian and apocalyptic streams in L.A. writing • the thriving coffeehouse scene, including the new L.A. poets • additional chapters by noted archivist and literary essayist John Ahouse. Among the transients, literary gypsies, bohemians and writers in imposed or self-imposed exile whose stories are told in "Literary L.A." are Oscar Zeta Acosta, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey, Carey McWilliams, Charles Lummis, Jacob Zeitlin, Louis Adamic, Nathanel West, Robinson Jeffers, Malcolm Lowry, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and many others. The first edition of "Literary L.A." was published by Chronicle Books in 1981. An expanded edition, on which this electronic edition is based, was published by California Classics Books in 2002. A documentary movie based on the book by KO Pictures is forthcoming.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy era. The Middle of the Journey revolves around a political turncoat and the anger his action awakens among a group of intellectuals summering in Connecticut. The story, however, is less concerned with the rights and wrongs of left and right than with an absence of integrity at the very heart of the debate. Certainly the hero, John Laskell, staging a slow recovery from the death of his lover and a near-fatal illness of his own, comes to suspect that the conflicts and commitments involved are little more than a distraction from the real responsibilities, and terrors, of the common world. A detailed, sometimes slyly humorous, picture of the manners and mores of the intelligentsia, as well as a work of surprising tenderness and ultimately tragic import, The Middle of the Journey is a novel of ideas whose quiet resonance has only grown with time. This is a deeply troubling examination of America by one of its greatest critics.
Extraordinary' TONY BLAIR 'Riveting' - PHILIPPE SANDS 'Brutal, brilliant and scurrilously funny' - MISHA GLENNY The real scoop isn't on the front page 'As FT editor, I was a privileged interlocutor to people in power around the world, each offering unique insights into high-level decision-making and political calculation, often in moments of crisis. These diaries offer snapshots of leadership in an age of upheaval...' Lionel Barber was Editor of the Financial Times for the tech boom, the global financial crisis, the rise of China, Brexit, and mainstream media's fight for survival in the age of fake news. In this unparalleled, no-holds-barred diary of life behind the headlines, he reveals the private meetings and exchanges with political leaders on the eve of referendums, the conversations with billionaire bankers facing economic meltdown, exchanges with Silicon Valley tech gurus and pleas from foreign emissaries desperate for inside knowledge, all against the backdrop of a wildly shifting media landscape. The result is a fascinating - and at times scathing - portrait of power in our modern age; who has it, what it takes and what drives the men and women with the world at their feet. Featuring close encounters with Trump, Cameron, Blair, Putin, Merkel and Mohammed Bin Salman and many more, this is a rare portrait of the people who continue to shape our world and who quite literally, make the news.
This extraordinary study examines how the accounts of a historical figure, the so-called democrat and liberal Dion, have been distorted and reworked by ancient and modern writers alike.
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