Reinventing Los Angeles : nature and community in the global city /

To measure the significance of Gottlieb's book, it is helpful to compare it to Robert L. Thayer Jr.'s LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice (CH, Oct'03, 41-0923). Although Gottlieb (urban and environmental policy, Occidental College) does not explicitly draw on Thayer's work, there are notable parallels. Gottlieb, like Thayer, is a "researcher, educator, and activist." Both books are deeply rooted in a California place. Gottlieb's place is Greater Los Angeles--a metropolitan region that paradoxically "has come to symbolize the absence and loss of nature" while set amid "a feast" of "mountains, ocean, rivers and streams, oaks and cottonwoods." Moreover, Gottlieb, like Thayer, interweaves personal experience with interdisciplinary scholarship to argue for the possibilities of "reinventing" nature and community--or livability and livelihood--in a globalizing world. Gottlieb's work does have important differences from Thayer's. Gottlieb's focus is urban globalization and his emphasis justice and diversity; Thayer's focus is the interface of countryside and city and his emphasis sustainability. Reinventing Los Angeles is difficult to categorize; it partakes of environmental study, history, public policy, urban studies, and participant journalism. Regrettably, it is marred by printing errors. Nonetheless, it complements Thayer's work and is an important addition to an emerging multidisciplinary literature on place. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. F. Anderson Northwestern College (IA)