Tabla de Contenidos:
  • Preface and acknowledgments.
  • Starting points: the place and the writers.
  • Boosters and boasters: the making and unmaking of a myth.
  • The twenties and beyond: oil, movies, and salvation.
  • View from the back room: the hard-boiled thirties.
  • Down these mean streets: the tough-guy detective story.
  • Sargasso of the imagination: the Hollywood novel.
  • Down and out in Los Angeles: from Bunker Hill to the Barrio.
  • Black dahlias and zoot suits: the recovery of history.
  • Endings and beginnings: surviving Apocalypse.