Hitting Highway 5 on my way to LA

I am off to Los Angeles tomorrow morning for another dose of book promotion.

This will be my fourth trip to southern California to talk about Towers of Gold, but in some ways this is the most exciting.

I will be appearing at the Los Angeles Public Library's ALOUD series. It is a very high profile series. somewhat like San Francisco's City Arts & Lectures. Well, perhaps not exactly the same since the people who go to City Arts & Lectures are usually famous, which I am not.

Still, it is a prestigious venue and I am thrilled to go. I will be "in conversation" with USC professor Bill Deverell. He is also the director of the Huntington-USC Institute of California and the West.

I knew Bill way back when. We went to Stanford together and met in a class on 19th century American social history. He went on to get his PhD at Princeton and specialize in the history of the West and of Los Angeles. After years at CalTech in Pasadena, he moved to USC. He is now one of the preeminent scholars on California.

The talk will happen at 7 pm Thursday July 16 at the Mark Taper Forum in the main branch of the LA public library. It's at Fifth and Flower streets.

I am hoping to get there a little early so I can poke around the library's fabulous history section. It takes up an entire floor. And they let you rummage through the photographs, too!