PDF Ebook L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

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L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

PDF Ebook L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

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Review

Named One of Daily Beast's "Favorite Books of 2009""The best non-fiction treatment of this era and this subject matter that I've ever read. I couldn't put it down for like two days." —Academy Award nominated producer of MOB CITY"Important and wonderfully enjoyable….A highly original and altogether splendid history that can be read for sheer pleasure and belongs on the shelf of indispensable books about America's most debated and least understood cities…..Utterly compelling reading."—Los Angeles Times"Completely entertaining….a colorful and entirely different take on the vices of Tinseltown."—Daily Beast"Echoes crime stylists Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy."—American History "L.A. NOIR is a fascinating look at the likes of Mickey Cohen and Bill Parker, the two kingpins of Los Angeles crime and police lore. John Buntin's work here is detailed and intuitive. Most of all, it's flat out entertaining."—Michael Connelly"A roller coaster ride....Gripping social history and a feast for aficionados of cops-and-robbers stories, both real and imagined."—Kirkus Reviews"Packed with Hollywood personalities, Beltway types and felons, Buntin's riveting tale of two ambitious souls on hell-bent opposing missions in the land of sun and make-believe is an entertaining and surprising diversion."—Publishers Weekly"Reads like a novel....almost impossible to put down. Buntin has written an important and entertaining book about one of America's greatest cities in the 20th century that echoes down to the world we live in today." —Bookreporter.com"In this breathtaking dual biography of mobster Mickey Cohen and police chief William Parker, John Buntin confronts America's most enigmatic city.  For a half century and more, the chiaroscuro of Los Angeles, its interplay of sunshine and shadow, has inspired novelists and filmmakers alike to explore what Buntin has now explored in a tour de force of non-fiction narrative."—Kevin Starr, University Professor and Professor of History, USC"John Buntin's nonfiction cops and robbers narrative about mid-20th century Los Angeles is not only compelling reading, but a heretofore unexplored look into the LAPD and the city it tried "To Protect and Serve" during one of the most colorful and tumultuous eras in the always provocative history of the City of Angels (and badmen). Dragnet, One Adam Twelve, Police Story, LA Confidential all rolled into one captivating book. Buntin nails it in this great read.'"—William Bratton, Chief of Police, LAPD

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About the Author

JOHN BUNTIN is a staff writer at Governing magazine, where he covers crime and urban affairs. A native of Mississippi, Buntin graduated from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and has worked as a case writer for Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. A former resident of Southern California, he now lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.

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Product details

Paperback: 448 pages

Publisher: Broadway Books; 1 edition (April 6, 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307352080

ISBN-13: 978-0307352088

Product Dimensions:

5.1 x 1 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.4 out of 5 stars

204 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#272,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. "So penned F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1925 classic, "The Great Gatsby." It was about New York at that time but it could have just as easily been Los Angeles at the outset of Paul Buntin's 2009 "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City."The author focuses the dynamic growth of Los Angeles from the 1920s on, its image and growing pains through the personalities and ambitions of two of its most celebrated figures and their rivalries: Mickey Cohen, the colorful wisecracking crime boss, and William H. Parker, the tenacious determined Los Angeles chief of police.Many other well known personalities make cameo appearances: Los Angeles Times publisher, Harry Chandler; notorious syndicate leaders, Bugsy Siegel, Jack Dragna and Sam Giacana; Columbia Pictures head, Harry Cohn and screenwriter Ben Hecht; entertainment personalities such as Jack Webb, Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner (of course, Johnny Stompanato); a young evangelist, Billy Graham; later the Kennedy brothers and their rivals, both political and underworld; lastly, with the Watts riots, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the rise of Tom Bradley and Ronald Reagan.It’s a lot to cover.Initially, Buntin's style is crisp and entertaining with a mix of clean factual details balanced by wry wit. The early history and course of the two protagonists is comfortable and easy to follow as well as the side trips into other aspects of their respective worlds. It’s great writing and hard to put down, especially when the relentless ambitions and quirky personalities are such fascinating contrasts to each other.Then, something dark casts a shade on both men: for Mickey it is both opportunity and his internal need to control the outcome of his efforts, making sure "the fix" is in; for Parker it is a need to protect his ambitions, their realization in an organizational sense and, ultimately, his "world view." There are no acceptable alternatives.At this point the story becomes more complicated because the dynamics of Los Angeles bring into play more people, more groups and more challenges for the author to keep the storyline focused.And to some extent, by the 1970's Cohen and Parker are more symbolic of past styles and values. In fact, the failings of their protégés underscore this transition. The allure of the original "noir" days is no longer so easy to capture.The author's handling of the 1964-Watts riots and their recurrence in 1992 is detailed and balanced in terms of considering both the police and protestor perspectives. It is clear that by the last riots the mechanisms for organized crime management and for police intervention and control that worked a few decades earlier had broken down.Los Angeles had outgrown its roots and no longer fit within the comfortable framework of the two dominant personalities around which the earlier story worked so well. And Buntin’s style shifts to a more journalistic approach with less of the earlier humor.So what made Los Angeles so seductive, as Raymond Chandler has stroked, that people like Cohen and Parker seemingly fought over its soul?It may have really begun much earlier in the 1880s when 10,000 people lived in the dusty town and the first refrigerated railroad cars filled with oranges left California and made their way east. The hype of the Southern Pacific “Big Four” (Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, C.P. Huntington) promised sundrenched lands and lives rich in comfort to the shivering masses in the Northeast and Midwest.And they came on the promise and without a clue what mystery awaited them.

When I purchased "LA Noir" I did not expect too much but figured I'd be able to find some interesting stories about Los Angeles. I have not been disappointed. I grew up in Southern California during those years and this book brought back and confirmed so many of my memories of the 1940s and '50s. Well written and extremely well documented. I was surprised at the depth of its reporting - and how it tied so many different stories and personalities together in ways that I had never imagined. If you are from Los Angeles or Southern California - or are just a history buff interested in 20th century personalities - this is the right book for you. I can not recommend this book highly enough. Buy it! Read it! Enjoy it! It's a very hard book to put down - but I had to eat and sleep from time to time. I plan on reading it again in a few months just because it was so entertaining.

This interesting history looks at the growth of Los Angeles through the 20th century cast by focusing on two representative characters -- longtime police chief William Parker and classic gangster Mickey Cohen. The strength of this approach is that both were extremely colorful types whose lives paralleled each other. Through their very different stories, we get a great picture of how Los Angeles grew from a bastion of crime, extortion and corruption into a mega city where by the 1960s the main issue had become a poisonous racial divide between the almost completely white police force and the impoverished black community.The earlier parts of the book rate perhaps the most entertaining. One is bemused by the extent to which corruption permeated the entire city establishment during and after Prohibition. Parker won his spurs as almost the only officer who was truly incorruptible. He also had a distinguished service record in World War II but returned as a die-hard anti-Communist convinced that only the police stood between the city and the Red Menace. His biggest success, set in motion before he became chief, was to build a system where the police acted independent of any civilian oversight and the Police Chief ruled like a medieval baron.Cohen's background was as a pugilist turned petty gangster and protege of Bugsy Siegel with a prodigious ability to make illicit millions running gambling rings. He was also an extremely vicious and violent man who did not hesitate to rub out competitors. He was eventually brought to justice for tax evasion and served two lengthy prison terms. But Mickey remained Mickey, an indelible character. This account leans heavily on his autobiography which seems to be packed full of bon mots and one-liners.The book ends with an account of the Rodney King riots which proved that little was learned after Parker's death and the ascension of Darryl Gates to become police chief.For lovers of contemporary history, written in a bright, engaging and approachable manner, this book is recommended.

I grew up as a child with many of these men mentioned in this book. Too much credit is given to Parker for much of the positive things that were accomplished by the LAPD during this time period. Yes, Parker was the police chief but more credit needs to go to the Deputy Chiefs, Inspectors, Captains and on down that actually did what was necessary to make the LAPD one of the least corrupt and most respected law enforcement agencies in the world. Parker was but a figurehead and a self-promoting politician.

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L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City PDF

L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City PDF