With its active fault systems, complex landforms, and myriad natural habitats, southern California boasts a rich and dynamic geologic environment. This abundantly illustrated volume at last provides an up-to-date, authoritative, and accessible resource for students and general readers interested in southern California's geology and native plants. Covering an extensive area, north from San Diego to Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada and east to the Mojave and Colorado deserts, its unique, comprehensive approach brings together for the first time the basic principles of geology, the story of plate tectonics, in-depth discussion of the geology of many specific locales within the region, and information on identifying southern California's native plants.

"Like citrus, oil, movies, radio, and television, aerospace helped create Southern California and embody its values. Blue Sky Metropolis launches an entirely fresh consideration of an iconic industry that answered the immemorial hunger of the human race for flight and the future."--Kevin Starr, University of Southern California "Blue Sky Metropolis presents an intriguing survey of a unique time in Southern California history, when cheap land and benign weather lured massive aerospace enterprises to the region—eventually serving as home to nearly half of the nation’s defense and space fabricators. Before there was a Silicon Valley, high-tech dreamers were on the loose in the Southland, creating inventions as diverse as the Voyager planetary spacecraft and the Stealth bomber. These highly readable essays help us understand how it happened—how Southern California shaped aerospace, and vice versa."—Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory "Peter Westwick has assembled a rich collection of essays that tell a wonderful story about the importance of the aerospace industry to Southern California and the importance of Southern California to the aerospace industry. There's technology, sociology, economics, geography, anthropology, and much more woven through the chapters. It's an ambitious project, but it succeeds in being interesting, informative, and entertaining."—Michael Rich, President and CEO, The RAND Corporation

This novel posing as a dissertation on León Fuertes, the fictional president of a made-up Banana Republic is “still fresh, funny, and disturbingly relevant” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). To fulfill his PhD requirement, Camilo Fuertes decides to write about his father León, the martyred president of Tinieblas, a small country in Latin America. As Camilo traces his family’s roots, we follow León along his twisted path through delinquency, learning, lust, and bravery to his historic position of leadership. At once a powerful vision of Latin American history and a brilliant parody of the academic form—complete with endnotes—The Dissertation is the second novel in Koster’s acclaimed Tinieblas trilogy, and an essential postmodern novel in the tradition of Vonnegut, Barth, and Nabokov. “One of the few books of the past 20 years that deserves to be called astonishing. It is a brilliant novel, structurally a marvel and, in all, a demonstration of elan as that quality seldom is experienced in a work of fiction.” —The Des Moines Register “Longtime Panama resident Koster portrays Latin America with a comedian’s sense of timing, a scholar’s sense of history, and a native’s fond despair.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Koster is that rare thing: a writer from the heart, passionate and uncompromising.” —John le Carré

Test Prep Book's CBEST Test Preparation Study Questions 2018 & 2019: Three Full-Length CBEST Practice Tests for the California Basic Educational Skills Test Developed by Test Prep Books for test takers trying to achieve a passing score on the CBEST exam, this comprehensive study guide includes: -Quick Overview -Test-Taking Strategies -Introduction -CBEST Practice Test #1 -Answer Explanations #1 -CBEST Practice Test #2 -Answer Explanations #2 -CBEST Practice Test #3 -Answer Explanations #3 Disclaimer: CBEST(R) is a registered trademark of California Basic Educational Skills Test, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product. Each section of the test has a comprehensive review created by Test Prep Books that goes into detail to cover all of the content likely to appear on the CBEST test. The Test Prep Books CBEST practice test questions are each followed by detailed answer explanations. If you miss a question, it's important that you are able to understand the nature of your mistake and how to avoid making it again in the future. The answer explanations will help you to learn from your mistakes and overcome them. Understanding the latest test-taking strategies is essential to preparing you for what you will expect on the exam. A test taker has to not only understand the material that is being covered on the test, but also must be familiar with the strategies that are necessary to properly utilize the time provided and get through the test without making any avoidable errors. Test Prep Books has drilled down the top test-taking tips for you to know. Anyone planning to take this exam should take advantage of the CBEST test prep review material, practice test questions, and test-taking strategies contained in this Test Prep Books study guide.

Rundel introduces readers to the plant communities of the Southern California coastal areas and foothills, including color photos of 250 species and additional color habitat photos.

In Material Dreams, Starr turns to one of the most vibrant decades in the Golden State's history, the 1920s, when some two million Americans migrated to California, the vast majority settling in or around Los Angeles. Although he treats readers to intriguing side trips to Santa Barbara and Pasadena, Starr focuses here mainly on Los Angeles, revealing how this major city arose almost defiantly on a site lacking many of the advantages required for urban development, creating itself out of sheer will, the Great Gatsby of American cities. He describes how William Ellsworth Smyth, the Peter the Hermit of the Irrigation Crusade, propounded the importance of water in Southern California's future, and how such figures as the self-educated, Irish engineer William Mulholland (who built the main aquaducts to Los Angeles) and George Chaffey (who diverted the Colorado River, transforming desert into the lush Imperial Valley) brought life-supporting water to the arid South. He examines the discovery of oil ("Yes it's oil, oil, oil / that makes LA boil," went the official drinking song of the Uplifters Club), the boosters and land developers, the evangelists (such as Bob Shuler, the Methodist Savanarola of Los Angeles, and Aimee Semple McPherson), and countless other colorful figures of the period. There are also fascinating sections on the city's architecture (such as the remarkably innovative Bradbury Building and its eccentric, neophyte designer, George Wyman), the impact of the automobile on city planning, the great antiquarian book collections, the Hollywood film community, and much more. By the end of the decade, Los Angeles had tripled in population and become the fifth largest city in the nation. In Material Dreams, Kevin Starr captures this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose.

"Sacred Sites honors the power and beauty of our indigenous heritage and homeland. By knowing our history we better understand the present and our journey into the future."---Anthony Morales, tribal chair, Gabrielino Tongva Council of San Gabriel --

This easy-to-use handbook is a must for anyone who wants to leave behind Southern California's noisy freeways and crowded beaches in search of the wild places where birds can be found. A perfect companion for excursions from San Luis Obispo County to the Mexican border, it is designed to familiarize birdwatchers, hikers, naturalists, residents, and travelers with the appearance and behavior of 120 of the most common coastal birds. 120 color plates.

The storied men's tennis program at the University of Southern California is documented in this first-ever book chronicling a college tennis program. Featuring interviews and anecdotes from Trojan tennis legends such as Alex Olmedo, Stan Smith, Dennis Ralston, Bob Lutz, Rick Leach, and Stevie Johnson as well as legendary coaches George Toley, Dick Leach and Peter Smith. This book is organized chronologically, taking readers from the early decades following the founding of the program in 1898 through the final match of the 2016-2017 season. While the progress of the team is central, readers will be fascinated by the biographical details of the key figures in each time period, which are enhanced by extensive footnotes drawing from archival materials, including personal letters, scrapbooks, published news stories, and original interviews.