Muslims in Las Vegas

Peter King's last byline in the Los Angeles Times (says LATimes.com) was during the recall election in October, 2003. Several months before then, he and photographer Genaro Molina began working on a project about Muslims living in Las Vegas. The resulting five-part series starts with a big spread in Sunday's paper. I might end up reading some of it, but in the meantime here's the note that accompanies the series:

In an effort to depict the lives of American Muslims in an extraordinary time, staff writer Peter H. King and staff photographer Genaro Molina spent a year among the Islamic community of one U.S. city - Las Vegas. From April 2003 to April 2004, they were frequent visitors to the city's mosques and the homes, workplaces and social events of the diverse and fast-growing Muslim population.

Also in Sunday's LAT, the former Times editor Michael Parks (now director of the journalism school at USC's Annenberg School) reviews three books on the Middle East, Jonathan Kirsch praises My California from Donna Wares and Angel City Press, and longtime local author Charles Phoenix breaks onto the LAT bestseller list for the first time with his Southern Californialand. And maybe the cult of The Da Vinci Code has finally weakened. The thriller by Dan Brown fell to #5, passed by, among others, Walter Mosely's Little Scarlet. Mosely, by the way, plays a small part as a congressman alongside Denzel Washington in The Manchurian Candidate; his character's name is, naturally, Mr. Rawlins.