Los Angeles

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. With a new afterword.