Author: Jennie Hollingsworth Giddings
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pasadena (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 172

View

Book Description

Author: Ann Scheid
Publisher: HPN Books
ISBN: 189361901X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

View

Book Description

Author: Lauren Kessler
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812992520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 349

View

Book Description
Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and out- maneuvered the U.S. government. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend. Florence "Pancho" Barnes was a California heiress who inherited a love of flying from her grandfather, a pioneer balloonist in the Civil War. Faced with a future of domesticity and upper-crust pretensions, she ran away from her responsibilities as wife and mother to create her own life. She cruised South America. She trekked through Mexico astride a burro. She hitchhiked halfway across the United States. Then, in the late 1920s, she took to the skies, one of a handful of female pilots. She was a barnstormer, a racer, a cross-country flier, and a Hollywood stunt pilot. She was, for a time, "the fastest woman on earth," flying the fastest civilian airplane in the world. She was an intimate of movie stars, a script doctor for the great director Erich von Stroheim, and, later in life, a drinking buddy of the supersonic jet jockey Chuck Yeager. She ran a wild and wildly successful desert watering hole known as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the raucous bar and grill depicted in The Right Stuff. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Lauren Kessler presents a portrait, both authoritative and affectionate, of a woman who didn't play by women's rules, a woman of large appetites--emotional, financial, and sexual--who called herself "the greatest conversation piece that ever existed."

Author: Paul C. Rollins
Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1644687216
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 195

View

Book Description
Spanning one hundred years and three continents, Letters from the Sphinx tells the story of the William Allens, an Old World family swept up in a New World sea of change. Incorporating sources from the United Kingdom and Egypt; previously unpublished diaries, photographs, and letters held in private collections; and journals housed at the Huntington Library, the biography describes one man's desperate pursuit of self that takes him from England to Egypt and back again before he sets sail, sick and alone, for Southern California. His story-and that of his wife and children-unfolds in unexpected ways against the backdrop of the San Gabriel Valley at a time when the foothills were a riot of golden poppies and the earth was untilled and bursting with opportunity.

Author: Midge Sherwood
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1465325859
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 369

View

Book Description
Days of Vintage, Years of Vision is the living, breathing story of one of the most important periods in American history. This three-volume series records the development of the State of California from its admission into the Union in 1850 to the turn of the 20th Century. It is a family narrative that chronicles both the personal and political lives of those who settled the southern section to bring in railroads, build harbors, and establish a world commercial centre that would one day send favorite sons to the White House. The author skillfully presents this family within the context of the times of not only the State, but the country and the world. The story evolves with the lives of Benjamin D. Wilson and his sons-in-law, George Smith Patton, Sr. father of the famous Generaland James De Barth Shorb, whose San Marino Ranchonce the queen property of Southern Californiais today the site of the Huntington Library, Art Galleries and Botanical Gardens. Volume I narrates the Los Angeles arrival of Wilson in 1841, a former Indian trader who became the new communitys first elected mayor and was twice-elected State Senator. Quiet, unassuming, committed to honor and duty, Wilson established a harbor, railroad facilities, a university and other advancements to secure his citys place on the world map as a cultural and commercial center. Mt. Wilson was named for him in appreciation and recognition of all that he did for the State. James De Barth Shorb arrived in San Francisco in 1864 with the first oil excitement and joined Wilson to manage his 14,000-acre San Pasqual ranch that extended from the foothills of Mt. Wilson to what is today the City of Alhambra. He became a member of Wilsons family by marrying his first daughter, Sue. He began a relentless political career, plunging into every major aspect of the States development after the death of Wilson in 1878. Volume II continues the Shorb narrative in 1879. He could have become Governor of the State, had he only accepted the nomination, but he, himself, admitted that his hands were full. Not only was he the father of nine children, but he was busy with his many business and civic endeavors. He built the largest winery in the world, helped develop water and irrigation projects, and was very influential in the establishment of laws governing such in the agricultural State of California. Shorb also pioneered an interurban railroad, the forerunner of Huntingtons network throughout Southern California. The Patton family is also introduced in Volume II. They arrived in 1865 as Civil War refugees. George Patton grew up in Los Angeles, became the citys district attorney, and developed a reputation as an explosive, fiery orator, who could hold a political convention of The Democracy spellbound for two hours. He married Wilsons daughter, Ruth, in 1884, and their son, George Smith Patton Jr., born November 11, 1885, was destined to become the famous World War II General. Volume III continues the narrative of this unusually vigorous and visionary family in 1889. Times were hard in the fin de sicle of the 19th Century, and they faced an awesome political battle to keep Los Angeles Harbor at San Pedro. The opposition? Collis P. Huntington, determined to establish the harbor at Santa Monica. This battle, recorded in national headlines, would call forth all of Pattons political energy. However, Volume III begins with more than hard times. While retaining the reverent spirit, the celebration of Thanksgiving Day in 1889 included a remarkable event. Heralded as the great Valley Hunt,a wildcat and fox huntit consisted of a hunting party of nearly 50 prominent members, and featured Shorbs famous hounds, the Australian blues. As a result of this successful activity, December 12, the president of the Valley Hunt Club wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times suggesting: A tournament

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 500

View

Book Description

Author: Historical Society of Southern California
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 776

View

Book Description

Author: Kevin Starr
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195042344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

View

Book Description
Examines the elements whose confluence defined Southern California including Spanish/Mexican influences, climate, and the rise of Hollywood.

Author: Naomi Hirahara
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375848819
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

View

Book Description
WHEN 12-YEAR-OLD ANGELA Kato arrives in L.A., the last thing she wants to do is spend the entire summer with her grandparents. But in the Kato family, one is never permitted to complain. Grandma Michi and Aunt Janet put Angela to work in their flower shop, folding origami and creating 1001 crane displays for newlyweds. At first, Angela learns the trade begrudgingly. But when her folding skills improve and her relationships with family and friends grow, Angela is able to cope with her troubles, especially her parents’ impending divorce.

Author: Thomas Pinney
Publisher: Heyday.ORIM
ISBN: 1597144266
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 435

View

Book Description
The author of A History of Wine in America recounts the beginnings of California’s wine trade in the once isolated pueblo now called Los Angeles. Winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award! With incisive analysis and a touch of dry humor, The City of Vines chronicles winemaking in Los Angeles from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century through its decline in the 1950s. Thomas Pinney returns the megalopolis to the prickly pear-studded lands upon which Mission grapes grew for the production of claret, port, sherry, angelica, and hock. From these rural beginnings Pinney reconstructs the entire course of winemaking in a sweeping narrative, punctuated by accounts of particular enterprises including Anaheim’s foundation as a German winemaking settlement and the undertakings of vintners scrambling for market dominance. Yet Pinney also shows Los Angeles’s wine industry to be beholden to the forces that shaped all California under the flags of Spain, Mexico, and the United States: colonial expansion dependent on labor of indigenous peoples; the Gold Rush population boom; transcontinental railroads; rapid urbanization; and Prohibition. This previously untold story uncovers an era when California wine meant Los Angeles wine, and reveals the lasting ways in which the wine industry shaped the nascent metropolis.