I could read a whole series of books like this one. The editor has drawn together diary entries spanning centuries, taking us through Spanish settlements and the rise of Hollywood. We see the city grow dense and fill with smog, and we see the positive Californian outlook of LA's dreamers and creatives. The book is formatted such that each day of the year has a small collection of entries which could be from any era. This provides a kaleidoscope of diverse narrators who describe anything from earthquakes to family life. Some are residents of the city or its outlying regions, others are only passing through. Spanish, Natives, Japanese, Korean, rich, poor, famous stars and average Joe's all give their voice to the growth of this great American metropolis. I found the entries by people I'd never heard of to be the most poignant and interesting. Not that the entries by well known people weren't, but their thoughts and opinions can be found anywhere. Dear Los Angeles was a good opportunity to collect the words of ordinary people who keep the city going.

This book has one issue- it is too long. If all of the entries were suited for the book this wouldn't be any issue, but I found myself skipping over some portions if I saw the writer was someone whose previous entries had been boring. (Sorry, Edgar Burroughs. Sorry, Octavia Butler.) It could have lost about one fourth of the entries and just kept the ones that really illuminated the rich history of Los Angeles.

Overall a beautiful concept and an excellent read.

This book was provided through NetGalley.

#DearLosAngeles #NetGalley

An awesome compilation of L.A's diary entries and letters from famous artists, scientist and famous personalities who lived or visited Los Angeles from 1542 to 2018. It feels a 365 days time travel around the history of this emblematic city which is Los Angeles.

I bet everyone has some level of affection to their city, state or country. You know the place where you have lived for the most part of your life and there is something you miss when you are away from your "home". But how about getting to know a city through other peoples experiences, better yet how about getting to know a place going back in time and how it has evolved over time by studying the contents of someone's diary and letters, not someone's, anyone's whose diary entries found a way into this book called Dear Los Angeles. Like the cover of this book says, it is a book of diary entries and letters from folks with intimate connection to Los Angeles. In it you will find entries by people you absolutely wouldn't have any idea who they are but then there are people such as Ray Bradbury, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marilyn Monroe, etc to name few well-known celebrities. That being said there is no particular order to this entries not is there any continuation a common theme. To an uninitiated this book might seem little bit on the edge of what we know to be a literary composition but quickly you start finding these entries entertaining and thought provoking. For example, my favorite is this one by some guy Ryan Reynolds from 2017 entry-" People in LA are deathly afraid of gluten. I swear to god, you could rob a liquor store in this city with a bagel.". There are also letters written to celebrities and politicians that captures the sociopolitical state during that time the entries were made.

Overall, I found this book different, different than what we are used to. I suppose it would made a good addition as a coffee table book. Flip open any page without having to worry about continuity, read a paragraph and be done with that chapter. Open a random page next time and do the same.

I received an advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.


I really wanted to enjoy this book. I've always loved LA and was excited to have a chance to read the book. The short entries are easy to read but the randomness of them were at times confusing. He clearly got his research from libraries and historical societies but I was surprised there was no pictures to go along with his research.

I enjoyed this collection of letters and other things written about the city of Los Angeles. While, I can't say I loved it, I did enjoy it. I would recommend it to those interested in history and the city of Los Angeles in particular.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I actually did. I am a native Angeleno, and I studied Los Angeles history for my master's degree, so I was already fairly familiar with many of the situations that were referenced in these diary entries and letters. And I really enjoyed reading early descriptions of the nascent city, the landscape surrounding it, and the interactions of the writer with the native peoples.

I had trouble, however, with the entries that Kipen chose to include within this book. There were interesting entries from a number of luminaries, including Theodore Dreiser, Ronald Reagan, Charles Lummis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc. But very little about these entries actually provided insight into the nature of life in Los Angeles at the time they were writing; in fact, in many cases I felt as if he selected entries that he found appealing, but that did nothing much to express something new or interesting about the development of the city or Southern California.

I really wish I had enjoyed this book more-I had hopes for a good addition to my library of Southern California history, but this book fell short of the mark for me.

I have only visited LA once, but I absolutely loved it. Dear Los Angeles was like a love letter from the city to us revisiting the past to more current dates. A pretty neat idea, I think!
An informal history lesson. Thanks NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group.

I loved the idea of this book more than the execution. As a relatively new resident of California I was eager to immerse myself in the past as well as the present.

This book does that--but only to a degree. The short entries are easy to read, but also easy to put down because I didn't feel that any one of them had enough depth to totally pull me in to the world of the writer. The book contains some wonderful snippets, and interesting impressions, but they felt like they were not so much of Los Angeles as they were of other people, of incidents, or of the movie industry---not of Los Angeles as a character itself.

Perhaps I am being harsh on the editor, but I am spoiled by Raymond Chandler's writing of Los Angeles. When Philip Marlowe haunts the streets of the city the reader feels like they are there. The city is dark; the atmosphere is thick and the people are real. I wanted that depth of understand when I read this book, but it was more like a quick postcard home. A snippet, not a story.

I so wanted to love DEAR LOS ANGELES by David Kipen, L. A. native, former literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts and book editor/critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. The potential is there for a terrific read, as this fascinating collection features diary entries and letters from 1542 to 2018, woven together to form a rich tapestry of Los Angeles over centuries.

But what is missing is the visual riff — photos, illustrations, a colorful design that could encircle and set off these pieces as the gems they are.

Kipen sourced material from the archives of libraries, historical societies, and private estates ... a prodigious effort ... to create a kaleidoscopic of Los Angeles from the Spanish missionary expeditions in the 1500s to the present.

His forward may be the best writing in the book, lively and lovely as he describes the city he adores and the book’s evolution. At one point, he mentioned the possibility of a coffee table book format, a better choice I believe, with “elaborate self-amused photo captions ... and that shot of Jack Nicholson arriving at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, hot off Chinatown with, yes, the Department of Water and Power Building looming up behind him.”

Now, that’s the book I want to read. 3/5

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

#DearLosAngeles #NetGalley

When celebrated food critic Jonathan Gold passed away recently, one of his most popular quotes was circulated around the internet: "If you live in Los Angeles, you are used to having your city explained to you by people who come in for a couple weeks...The thing that people find hard to understand is the magnitude of what's here. The huge numbers of multiple cultures that live in the city that come together in this beautiful and haphazard fashion. And the fault lines between them are sometimes where you can find the most beautiful things."

In "Dear Los Angeles" David Kipen has collected hundreds of journal entries and letters from an array of people dating as far back as 1542 to present day 2018. Miners deep in the throws of the Gold Rush, U.S. presidents and First Ladies, Albert Einstein, Zora Neale Hurston, Aldous Huxley, and Marilyn Monroe, are just a few of the people whose musings about LA are featured.

The book is arranged by month, not year, so it's interesting to go from reading an entry from 1891 and have the next entry be from 1979 and see how different and sometimes similar their feelings are about the city a large time span.

"Dear Los Angeles" is a giant love letter to the city of angels. It's not imperative to read in one sitting, but could make for a great coffee book table or a gift for that friend who just moved out west.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a review.

DEAR LOS ANGELES is a collection of ephemera about the history of, and life, in LA. The author chose to place all these glimpses into LA history with no particular order. I cannot understand the logic of the presentation. It is neither by author or date, rather disconnected fragments.

I found the randomness of this book very confusing, possibly made more so by the digital format, Between the dates and authors being collected with no plan in mind, and attribution being inserted at the end of the reading, I was often confused. I was very excited about reading this, but I need more coherence in my reading.

As a former Social Studies teacher, I cannot imagine trying to have students unpack something in this format.

I would love to read this book again in a clearer more longitudinal format. I apologize for my own inability to process the material, but I think others may have the same issues.