Alta Journal: Stories of California and the West

THE LATEST FROM ALTA

Don't miss this week's upcoming events and new stories.

5 Leading Architects on Gehry’s Influence

Elizabeth Diller, Daniel Libeskind, Eric Owen Moss, Lorcan O’Herlihy, and Dana McKinney White share candid insights on Gehry’s influence—from museum icons to community-minded planning.

illustration of a rider in a red cape galloping on a brown horse while holding a lantern labeled “ai,” symbolizing a historic and forward looking approach to artificial intelligence.

Letter from Cambridge

mcnamara at war, philip taubman and william taubman, biography

The Price of Loyalty

15 New Books for October

Football As Religion

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

JOIN US TODAY

Alta Live: Road Trip Down Highway 89

Wednesday, October 1, at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time

alta, issue 33, cover, art and architecture

CURRENT ISSUE

Issue 33: Art & Architecture

Alta Journal celebrates the impulse to create, build—and rebuild in our 33rd issue.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

rose b. simpson sits on a rolling stool in front of her partially restored 1964 buick riviera in a new mexico auto garage, wearing work pants and kneepads.

CLAY AND CARS

At the Wheel and Over the Hood

Rose B. Simpson’s mixed-media sculptures offer an exuberant blending of ancestral and contemporary culture.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

ISSUE 33

two cowboys in matching vests and blue shirts share a kiss between their horses at the denton fairgrounds.

Boots, Bucks, and Drag

academy museum of motion pictures, flop, los angeles, entrance, wilshire boulevard

How the Academy Museum Misses the Mark

exterior of frank gehry’s santa monica home, featuring corrugated metal, exposed plywood, and chain link fencing—an iconic example of deconstructivist architecture.

Alta Q&A: ‘I’m Interested in Delivering’

scott and angela uriu, uriu architecture, altadena eaton fire, rebuild

‘We Get to Start from Scratch’

Latest from the California Book Club

Join the West Coast literary conversation every month.

promotional image for the alta california book club celebrating its 5th anniversary

The New Canon

Celebrate the California Book Club’s Fifth Anniversary at Litquake

Rebecca Solnit and Paul Yamazaki will join John Freeman to discuss his new book, California Rewritten, at the Verdi Club in San Francisco.

Excerpt: ‘California Rewritten’

Meet Alta Journal at Litquake’s Small Press Book Fair

john freeman, california rewritten, keplers menlo park, tommy orange, elizabeth castillo

Alta Journal and John Freeman at Kepler’s

california book club, the backyard bird chronicles, amy tan, john muir laws

Transcript: Amy Tan’s ‘The Backyard Bird Chronicles’

THE MONDAY BOOK REVIEW

Sign-up for our weekly book review email.

a different kind of tension by jonathan lethem, book review

Life Writing

In A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories, Jonathan Lethem takes us back and forth in time.

water mirror echo, bruce lee and the making of asian america, jeff chang

Poetics of Fighting

split portrait: susana m. morris in yellow next to the cover of positive obsession, featuring octavia butler in red lipstick and large eyeglasses.

Charting One’s Own Course

Travel Westward

cover of rabih alameddine’s novel "the true true story of raja the gullible," featuring a turquoise background with red thread loops. portrait of rabih alameddine wearing a black cap and glasses, standing against a gray wall.

Time After Time

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

Q&A: A Conversation with Kelly Lytle Hernández

Kelly Lytle Hernández’s Bad Mexicans is the California Book Club’s September 2023 selection.

EVENTS

Alta Live hosts interviews with magazine contributors, subjects, and California luminaries every Wednesday.

Alta Live: The Original Frozen Dead Guy

Greg Campbell and Bo Shaffer join Alta Live to discuss an annual Colorado tradition that involves coffin races and 125-year-old Norwegian corpse look-alike contests.

Alta Live: Disney’s First Female Storyteller

Alta Live: Road Trip Down Highway 89

hand pressing a red button activating facial recognition features

Alta Live: California’s Top Trivia Team

Alta Live: Author Peter Orner

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

illustration of flapper style woman with dark bob haircut, red lips, and diamond jewelry—depicting lorelei lee, protagonist of gentlemen prefer blondes.

THE REAL STORY

‘A Diamond and Safire Bracelet Lasts Forever’

The hardscrabble origin story of Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the bestselling 1925 novel that spawned a smash Broadway musical and the iconic Marilyn Monroe film.

THE WEEKLY ALTA NEWSLETTER

New stories from California and the West sent to your inbox every Thursday.

tanaamii akatsuka, folding screen, 2023, manga, de young museum

Manga, a Bay Area Love Story

A new exhibition at the de Young Museum explores how the Japanese art form conquered the world.

Inside the Yawning Booth

tyler wells at the ecology center tending a fire under a steamship round of beef, cooking over open coals. the scorched foundation of a property destroyed by the eaton fire near betsy restaurant in altadena.

The Chef in the Tent

artist sonia romero, the swimmer, catalina island

On Catalina, a New Exhibition Draws Locals

Woody Guthrie’s California

author robert louis stevenson in a portrait with the women who were instrumental in helping him advance his literary career despite recurring illnesses, from left wife fanny stevenson, stepdaughter and literary assistant isobel osbourne, and his mother, margaret isabella stevenson

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Excerpt: ‘A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson’

Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson’s two-month honeymoon provided the basis for his memoir, The Silverado Squatters, and cemented their shared love for adventure.