Not in L.A.

The University of California Press has just published a book on Los Angeles politics by four Occidental College faculty members. Two authors of The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City, Robert M. Gottlieb and Peter Dreier, are well-known writers about Los Angeles and advocates of progressive politics here. Harold Meyerson of LA Weekly wrote one of the chapters. Yet the first review of the book appeared not in a local media outlet but in today's San Francisco Chronicle, where James B. Goodno argues that Los Angeles is the most progressive city in California. (Even though the authors' candidate, Antonio Villaraigosa, lost convincingly in the 2001 mayor's race. The Chronicle also got the book title a tad wrong.) The only L.A. media acknowledgment of the book I could find was on Jon Wiener's show on KPFK last Wednesday.