The 1977–78 Los Angeles Dodgers came close. Their tough lineup of young and ambitious players squared off with the New York Yankees in consecutive World Series. The Dodgers’ run was a long time in the making after years of struggle and featured many homegrown players who went on to noteworthy or Hall of Fame careers, including Don Sutton, Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, and Steve Yeager. Dodgerland is the story of those memorable teams as Chavez Ravine began to change, baseball was about to enter a new era, and American culture experienced a shift to the “me” era. Part journalism, part social history, and part straight sportswriting, Dodgerland is told through the lives of four men, each representing different aspects of this L.A. story. Tom Lasorda, the vocal manager of the Dodgers, gives an up-close view of the team’s struggles and triumphs; Tom Fallon, a suburban small-business owner, witnesses the Dodgers’ season and the changes to California's landscape—physical, social, political, and economic; Tom Wolfe, a chronicler of California’s ever-changing culture, views the events of 1977–78 from his Manhattan writer’s loft; and Tom Bradley, Los Angeles’s mayor and the region’s most dominant political figure of the time, gives a glimpse of the wider political, demographic, and economic forces that affected the state at the time. The boys in blue drew baseball’s focus in those two seasons, but the intertwining narratives tell a larger story about California, late 1970s America, and great promise unrealized.

The Dodgers Encyclopedia is the definitive book on Los Angeles and Brooklyn Dodgers baseball. It traces the history of one of Major League Baseball's most successful organizations, from the misty beginnings of its predecessors in rural Brooklyn more than 140 years ago, through their formative years in the major leagues, as a member of the American Association from 1884 through 1889, to a full-fledged representative of the National League since 1890. It covers the exciting and oftenzany years in Brooklyn through 1957, as well as a long and successful sojourn in Southern California during the last half of the 20th century.

The wildly entertaining narrative of the outrageous 1981 Dodgers from the award-winning author of Dynastic, Fantastic, Bombastic and The Baseball Codes In the Halberstam tradition of capturing a season through its unforgettable figures, They Bled Blue is a sprawling, mad tale of excess and exuberance, the likes of which could only have occurred in that place, at that time. That it culminated in an unlikely World Series win--during a campaign split by the longest player strike in baseball history--is not even the most interesting thing about this team. The Dodgers were led by the garrulous Tommy Lasorda--part manager, part cheerleader--who unyieldingly proclaimed devotion to the franchise through monologues about bleeding Dodger blue and worshiping the "Big Dodger in the Sky," and whose office hosted a regular stream of Hollywood celebrities. Steve Garvey, the All-American, All-Star first baseman, had anchored the most durable infield in major league history, and, along with Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey, was glaringly aware that 1981 would represent the end of their run together. The season's real story, however, was one that nobody expected at the outset: a chubby lefthander nearly straight out of Mexico, twenty years old with a wild delivery and a screwball as his flippin' out pitch. The Dodgers had been trying for decades to find a Hispanic star to activate the local Mexican population; Fernando Valenzuela was the first to succeed, and it didn't take long for Fernandomania to sweep far beyond the boundaries of Chavez Ravine. They Bled Blue is the rollicking yarn of the Los Angeles Dodgers' crazy 1981 season.

A story about baseball, family, the American Dream, and the fight to turn Los Angeles into a big league city. Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project. Then, in a remarkable turn, public housing in the city was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy. Instead of getting their homes back, the remaining residents saw the city sell their land to Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now LA would be getting a different sort of utopian fantasy -- a glittering, ultra-modern stadium. But before Dodger Stadium could be built, the city would have to face down the neighborhood's families -- including one, the Aréchigas, who refused to yield their home. The ensuing confrontation captivated the nation - and the divisive outcome still echoes through Los Angeles today.

Conceived as a challenge to long–standing conventional wisdom, Creating the Future is a work of social history/cultural criticism that examines the premise that the progress of art in Los Angeles ceased during the 1970s—after the decline of the Ferus Gallery, the scattering of its stable of artists (Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Ed Moses, Ed Rusha and others), and the economic struggles throughout the decade—and didn't resume until sometime around 1984 when Mark Tansey, Alison Saar, Judy Fiskin, Carrie Mae Weems, David Salle, Manuel Ocampo, among others became stars in an exploding art market. However, this is far from the reality of the L.A. art scene in the 1970s. The passing of those fashionable 1960s–era icons, in fact, allowed the development of a chaotic array of outlandish and independent voices, marginalized communities, and energetic, sometimes bizarre visions that thrived during the stagnant 1970s. Fallon's narrative describes and celebrates, through twelve thematically arranged chapters, the wide range of intriguing artists and the world—not just the objects—they created. He reveals the deeper, more culturally dynamic truth about a significant moment in American art history, presenting an alternative story of stubborn creativity in the face of widespread ignorance and misapprehension among the art cognoscenti, who dismissed the 1970s in Los Angeles as a time of dissipation and decline. Coming into being right before their eyes was an ardent local feminist art movement, which had lasting influence on the direction of art across the nation; an emerging Chicano Art movement, spreading Chicano murals across Los Angeles and to other major cities; a new and more modern vision for the role and look of public art; a slow consolidation of local street sensibilities, car fetishism, gang and punk aesthetics into the earliest version of what would later become the "Lowbrow" art movement; the subversive co–opting, in full view of Pop Art, of the values, aesthetics, and imagery of Tinseltown by a number of young and innovative local artists who would go on to greater national renown; and a number of independent voices who, lacking the support structures of an art movement or artist cohort, pursued their brilliant artistic visions in near–isolation. Despite the lack of attention, these artists would later reemerge as visionary signposts to many later trends in art. Their work would prove more interesting, more lastingly influential, and vastly more important than ever imagined or expected by those who saw it or even by those who created it in 1970's Los Angeles. Creating the Future is a visionary work that seeks to recapture this important decade and its influence on today's generation of artists.

Buzzie and the Bull chronicles a baseball year in the lives of two lifelong friends who couldn’t be more different: Buzzie Bavasi, the legendary general manager of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, and Al “the Bull” Ferrara, bon vivant, fountain of joy, and bench player. Their 1965 baseball journey encompassed a thrilling pennant race settled on the final day of the season, a city engulfed in flames, a perfect game, and a GM who extolled his friend the Bull as a hero in May and then banished him from the team to the depths of public purgatory in July. The partnership of these two characters—the general manager who valued fearlessness above all else and the crazy player who loved living on the edge—became the embodiment of champions who never choked in the clutch. Over seventeen years, Bavasi’s teams won eight pennants and four World Series titles. His approach deserves review, and his friendship with Ferrara illustrates the ground on which he staked his baseball career. The summer of 1965 proved Bavasi’s thesis that champions are built on players with one core characteristic: nerves of steel. Buzzie and the Bull offers a counterpoint to today’s focus on advanced statistical analysis that may be crowding out the important work of discovering a player’s unique human qualities: the intangibles. Gauge those intangibles correctly and you get an edge—and edges help win championships.

Greatness is often overlooked in its own time. For Ezzard Charles--one of boxing's most skilled practitioners, with a record of 93-25-1 (52 KO)--recognition took decades. Named by The Ring magazine as the greatest light heavyweight of all time, Charles was frustrated in his attempts to get a shot at the 175-pound title, and as World Heavyweight Champion (1949-1951) struggled to win the respect of boxing fans captivated by Joe Louis' power and charisma. This first-ever biography of "The Cincinnati Cobra" covers his early life in a small country town and his career in the glamorously dirty business of prizefighting in the 1950s, one of the sport's Golden Ages. Charles' fights with Louis, Jersey Joe Walcott, Rocky Marciano and his three wins over the legendary Archie Moore are detailed.