Frederick Hastings Rindge (1857-1905) moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles in 1882 and bought the famed rancho at Malibu, which he dubbed "Laudamus Farm." Happy days in southern California (1898) opens with a history of the region, followed by chapters dealing with different lifestyles in the area: "seaside life" at Redondo, Santa Monica, and Santa Catalina, and the fish and animals of the sea; ranch life; climate; horseback riding; and mountain climbing.

In Ghosthunting Southern California author Sally Richards takes readers on an eerie journey through the region on a series of paranormal investigations to historic locations marred by tragedy and unfortunate happenstance that have caused the dead to rise. This collection brings well-known paranormal researchers, history, and evidence collected with state-of-the-art equipment together for chilling non-fiction accounts of haunted Southern California. The stories leave readers with a sense of deep interest to find out what lies in the murky darkness beyond. Sally Richards, historian, paranormal investigator, and spiritualist medium brings history alive as she investigates locations with high-profile paranormal experts using state-of-the-art equipment, historians, and people who share a similar curiosity of the paranormal to bring you the latest on "haunted" locations throughout Southern California. From the Mexican border to Santa Barbara, readers find chilling accounts of paranormal activity. Whether readers are veterans of ghost hunting, paranormal neophytes, or armchair travelers, this book offers fresh information and a style that puts readers right into the paranormal action.

Emma Hildreth Adams of Cleveland, Ohio, visited Southern California in 1884 and 1886. To and fro in southern California (1887) is the book edition of Mrs. Adams' travel letters originally published in a Cleveland newspaper. She writes at length of her rail trips west and stops in New Mexico and Arizona. In California, she focuses her attention on Los Angeles, with visits to Downey, Anaheim, Pasadena, and San Pedro. She discusses area schools, agriculture, regional flower-growing, irrigation projects, and the position of women; and reports an interview with Hubert H. Bancroft.

This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right. "How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically diferent society has emerged in its place," writes Starr. As he recreates the "lost California," Starr examines the rich variety of elements that figured in the growth of the Southern California way of life: the Spanish/Mexican roots, the fertile land, the Mediterranean-like climate, the special styles in architecture, the rise of Hollywood. He gives us a broad array of engaging (and often eccentric) characters: from Harrision Gray Otis to Helen Hunt Jackson to Cecil B. DeMille. Whether discussing the growth of winemaking or the burgeoning of reform movements, Starr keeps his central theme in sharp focus: how Californians defined their identity to themselves and to the nation.

Benjamin Cummings Truman (1835-1916) of Providence, Rhode Island, was a Civil War Union officer and newspaper correspondent before coming to California in 1866 as a special agent of the Post Office. In 1870 he was sent to Washington as correspondent for the New York Times and the San Francisco Bulletin but soon returned to become editor of the Los Angeles Evening Express, and owner of the Los Angeles Star. In 1879 he became chief of the literary bureau of the Southern Pacific Railway. Semi-tropical California (1874), written during his tenure at the Los Angeles Star, defines "semi-tropical" California as portions of Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties, but devotes most of its attention to the city and county of Los Angeles and neighboring San Gabriel Valley. Truman discusses specific mines, residences, fruit orchards, vineyards, and ranches as well as general patterns of agriculture, sheep and cattle raising, irrigation, and mineral resources. Beyond Los Angeles, he describes the towns and cities of Anaheim, Wilmington, and San Bernardino.