California

Plan all your California getaways with our Golden State catalog. Whip up the coast on the PCH to old San Francisco, where Gold Rush fever is slow to fade. Leave some flowers for Cecil B. DeMille and Johnny Ramone at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Get a progress report on the receding waters of the Salton Sea and the expanding minds in Northridge. From the fertile fields of Nevada County to the Venice Beach Boardwalk, experience the largesse and diversity of California's history with our California history books. [View all California books]
8 products
Southern California Surf Music, 1960-1966
Southern California Surf Music, 1960-1966
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Theatres of San Francisco
Theatres of San Francisco
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Theatres in Los Angeles
Theatres in Los Angeles
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Ciro's
Ciro's
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Max Factor and Hollywood
Max Factor and Hollywood
$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%
Theatres of the San Francisco Peninsula
Theatres of the San Francisco Peninsula
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
San Francisco Jazz
San Francisco Jazz
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Theatres of Oakland
Theatres of Oakland
$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

Southern California Surf Music, 1960-1966

9781467133203

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Dick Dale & the Del-Tones began holding weekend dances at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California, in the summer of 1960. Over the next year and a half, Dale developed the sound and style that came to be known as "surf music." The result was the development of more powerful guitar amplifiers, a dramatic increase in the sales of Fender guitars and amplifiers, and a shift from New York to West Coast recording studios. More and more people were drawn to the sport of surfing, which became an important part of teen beach culture at the time. Even landlocked teenagers were captured by the moment, carrying surfboards atop their woodies in Phoenix or bleaching their hair blonde in St. Paul. For hundreds of thousands of kids, though, the attraction was not the connection to surfing; it was the connection to the music pioneered by Dick Dale.
Southern California Surf Music, 1960-1966

Theatres of San Francisco

9780738530208

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
You read the sad stories in the papers: another ornate, 1920s, single-screen theatre closes, to be demolished and replaced by a strip mall. That's progress, and in this 20-screen multiplex world, it's happening more and more. Only a handful of the 100 or so neighborhood theatres that once graced these streets are left in San Francisco, but they live on in the photographs featured in this book. The heyday of such venues as the Clay, Noe, Metro, New Mission, Alexandria, Coronet, Fox, Uptown, Coliseum, Surf, El Rey, and Royal was a time when San Franciscans thronged to the movies and vaudeville shows, dressed to the hilt, to see and be seen in majestic art deco palaces. Unfortunately, this era has passed into history despite the dedicated efforts of many neighborhood preservation groups.
Theatres of San Francisco

Theatres in Los Angeles

9780738555799

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Los Angeles and the movies grew up together, and a natural extension of the picture business was the premium presentation of the product--the biggest, best, and brightest theatres imaginable. The magnificent movie palaces along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles still represent the highest concentration of vintage theatres in the world. With Hollywood and the movies practically synonymous, the theatres in the studios' neighborhood were state-of-the-art for showbiz, whether they were designed for film, vaudeville, or stage productions. From the elegant Orpheum and the exotic Grauman's Chinese to the modest El Rey, this volume celebrates the architecture and social history of Los Angeles's unique collection of historic theatres past and present. The common threads that connect them all, from the grandest movie palace to the smallest neighborhood theatre, are stories and the ghosts of audiences past waiting in the dark for the show to begin.
Theatres in Los Angeles

Ciro's

9781467133791

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Many entertainers launched their careers at Ciro's Nightclub, often referred as The Nightclub of the Stars. Ciro's was patronized by both famous and non-famous guests who enjoyed dancing, dining, and comedy routines featuring top-name entertainers such as Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Sophie Tucker, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Liberace, Nat King Cole, Joe E. Lewis, and Sammy Davis Jr.—just to name a few. The nightclub's house band was led by Dick Stabile, although bandleader Xavier Cugat, best known for popularizing the rumba in the United States, was a regular headliner at the club. The elite Hollywood regulars at Ciro's included some of the most popular names in entertainment at the time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and many more.
Ciro's

Max Factor and Hollywood

9781467136105

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%
When Polish wigmaker and cosmetician Max Factor arrived in Los Angeles at the dawn of the motion picture industry, "make-up" had been associated only with stage performers and ladies of the oldest profession. Appalled by the garish paints worn by actors, Factor introduced the first "flexible" greasepaint for film in 1914. With a few careful brush strokes, a lot of innovation and the kind of luck that can happen only in Hollywood, Max Factor changed the meaning of glamour. His innovations can be experienced in every tube of lipstick, palette of eye shadow and bottle of nail lacquer used today. Join author Erika Thomas as she reveals the makeup guru's expert beauty tips and the story of how he created the most iconic golden-era looks that are as relevant today as they were nearly a century ago.
Max Factor and Hollywood

Theatres of the San Francisco Peninsula

9780738575780

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
The San Francisco Peninsula serves as a geographic and transportation link between the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and all points north and south. As commerce increased along its highways and railroad lines from the late 19th century onward, cities and towns flourished along that corridor. Wherever commerce went, entertainment followed. Beginning with early playhouses and storefront nickelodeons, continuing through the movie palace period, the golden age of the drive-in theatre, and into the days of the multiplex, this volume of vintage photographs captures the various eras as they applied to the peninsula.
Theatres of the San Francisco Peninsula

San Francisco Jazz

9781467132879

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

San Francisco is probably best known for its hills, ubiquitous fog, dungeness crab and the Golden Gate Bridge. But jazz music's threads are similarly woven into the fabric of the city and its environs.  Whether performed in renowned clubs like So Different, Jimbo's Bop City, Black Hawk, and the Jazz Workshop or in halls like the Primalon Ballroom and Great American Music Hall, jazz has infused the city from the Barbary Coast to the Fillmore, thrilling audiences for over a century. San Franciscans have grooved to and incubated scores of jazz acts, hot and cool, raucous and contemplative.

San Francisco Jazz

Theatres of Oakland

9780738546810

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%
Oakland has a rich theatre history, from the amusements of a gas-lit downtown light opera and vaudeville stage in the 1870s to the ornate cinematic escape portals of the Great Depression. Dozens of neighborhood theatres, once the site of family outings and first dates, remain cherished memories in the lives of Oaklanders. The city can still boast three fabulous movie palaces from the golden age of cinema: the incomparable art deco Paramount, which now offers live performances and films; the stately Grand Lake gracing the sinuous shores of Lake Merritt; and the magnificently eccentric Fox Oakland, with its imposing Hindu gods flanking the stage. The Paramount and Grand Lake still stir the heartstrings of patrons with showings preceded by interludes on their mighty Wurlitzer organs.
Theatres of Oakland