Time Capsule Press was started last year by Narda Zacchino, a former top editor at the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and Dickson Louie, an ex-LAT and Times Mirror executive. The business plan is to partner with newspapers to re-purpose stories and photos in their morgues. Their first book is "Los Angeles Lakers: 50 Amazing Years in the City of Angels," based on old Times stories with help from former LAT columnist Scott Ostler. (The Times discontinued its own book publishing arm in 2004 — the books it published now reside with Angel City Press, my publisher.)

"Lakers" has a 6,000-word foreword from Phil Jackson, tons of memorable Getty Images photos, and was designed by the Times' former design director Tom Trapnell. The launch party last night in Brentwood at the home of Stanley and Betty Sheinbaum brought out the LAT's NBA columnist Mark Heisler, with introductions by Robert Scheer, the KCRW commentator and Truthdig editor who's married to Zacchino.

2009 favorite books: Sunday's L.A. Times includes the editors' picks of favorite books, among those with local interest "Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pynchon, "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" by John Buntin, "A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age" by Richard Rayner, "Imperial" by William T. Vollmann, "West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State" by Mark Arax, "The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement" by Miriam Pawel and "Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen" by David Sax