The city of Los Alamitos and the contiguous, unincorporated community of Rossmoor exemplify small-town America amid the populous western Orange County sprawl. Their tree-lined streets, well-kept homes and first-rate schools are reflected in Rossmoor's selection as the No. 1 suburb in California (and No. 9 nationwide) in a 2012 study by Coldwell Banker Realty. The evolution of Los Alamitos from cattle ranches and sugar beet factory town to World War II military town and ultimately into residential neighborhoods took a century. Meanwhile, the planned "walled 'city' of Rossmoor" was created between 1955 and 1961. Despite annexation talk, Rossmoor and "Los Al" coexist apart together, so to speak, on Long Beach's outskirts. Author Larry Strawther traces the histories of these interdependent sister communities, which epitomize the reality in the legend of the Orange County lifestyle.

One of the Top Urban Planning Books of 2022, Planetizen The full and fascinating guidebook that Orange County deserves. A People’s Guide to Orange County is an alternative tour guide that documents sites of oppression, resistance, struggle, and transformation in Orange County, California. Orange County is more than the well-known images on orange crate labels, the high-profile amusement parks of Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, or the beaches. It is also a unique site of agricultural and suburban history, political conservatism in a liberal state, and more diversity and discordance than its pop-cultural images show. It is a space of important agricultural labor disputes, segregation and resistance to segregation, privatization and the struggle for public space, politicized religions, Cold War global migrations, vibrant youth cultures, and efforts for environmental justice. Memorably, Ronald Reagan called Orange County the place “where all the good Republicans go to die,” but it is also the place where many working-class immigrants have come to live and work in its agricultural, military-industrial, and tourist service economies. Orange County is the fifth-most populous county in America. If it were a city, it would be the nation’s third-largest city; if it were a state, its population would make it larger than twenty-one other states. It attracts 42 million tourists annually. Yet Orange County tends to be a chapter or two squeezed into guidebooks to Los Angeles or Disneyland. Mainstream guidebooks focus on Orange County’s amusement parks and wealthy coastal communities, with side trips to palatial shopping malls. These guides skip over Orange County’s most heterogeneous half—the inland space, where most of its oranges were grown alongside oil derricks that kept the orange groves heated. Existing guidebooks render invisible the diverse people who have labored there. A People’s Guide to Orange County questions who gets to claim Orange County’s image, exposing the extraordinary stories embedded in the ordinary landscape.

Orange County is home to some of the best paved roads, dirt roads, mountain bike trails, and bike paths. Best Bike Rides Orange County describes over forty of the most diverse recreational and scenic rides in the Orange County area. With most rides between 3 and 50 miles, it's easy to find a ride that suits your tastes. Each route includes complete point-by-point miles and directions, map, text description of the riding area, GPS coordinates of the start/finish point, and full-color photos of the ride's features. More than just a trail guide, Best Bike Rides Orange County gives the reader important information, such as flora and fauna, history, folklore, special events, and cultural happenings.

The wooden pier, tree-lined Main Street and ocean views, coupled with a prosperous and happy community, led "Forbes "magazine to name Seal Beach one of the five friendliest towns in America. Getting there, however, was a bumpy adventure. Starting in the 1860s as Anaheim Landing, the first seaport in what would become Orange County, it soon became a summer retreat for squatters and illegal saloons. Despite the efforts of real estate developers to turn the town into an amusement resort and an early center for aviation and motion pictures, Seal Beach became neighboring Long Beach's tavern, brothel and gambling destination. But order and prosperity eventually prevailed to create today's quiet residential city. Join author Larry Strawther as he tracks Seal Beach's evolution from raucous port to cherished community.

The fascinating history of the twentieth century's most successful experiment in mass housing While the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and their contemporaries frequently influences our ideas about house design at the midcentury, most Americans during this period lived in homes built by little-known builders who also served as developers of the communities. Often dismissed as "little boxes, made of ticky-tacky," the tract houses of America's postwar suburbs represent the twentieth century’s most successful experiment in mass housing. Houses for a New World is the first comprehensive history of this uniquely American form of domestic architecture and urbanism. Between 1945 and 1965, more than thirteen million houses—most of them in new ranch and split-level styles—were constructed on large expanses of land outside city centers, providing homes for the country’s rapidly expanding population. Focusing on twelve developments in the suburbs of Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Barbara Miller Lane tells the story of the collaborations between builders and buyers, showing how both wanted houses and communities that espoused a modern way of life—informal, democratic, multiethnic, and devoted to improving the lives of their children. The resulting houses differed dramatically from both the European International Style and older forms of American domestic architecture. Based on a decade of original research, and accompanied by hundreds of historical images, plans, and maps, this book presents an entirely new interpretation of the American suburb. The result is a fascinating history of houses and developments that continue to shape how tens of millions of Americans live. Featured housing developments in Houses for a New World: Boston area: Governor Francis Farms (Warwick, RI) Wethersfield (Natick, MA) Brookfield (Brockton, MA) Chicago area: Greenview Estates (Arlington Heights, IL) Elk Grove Village Rolling Meadows Weathersfield at Schaumburg Los Angeles and Orange County area: Cinderella Homes (Anaheim, CA) Panorama City (Los Angeles) Rossmoor (Los Alamitos, CA) Philadelphia area: Lawrence Park (Broomall, PA) Rose Tree Woods (Broomall, PA)

Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)