In this collection of articles, essays, interviews and columns, Wanda Coleman, Los Angeles’ noted satirist, poet, and journalist, recounts three decades of the growth of her city and herself. Originally written for the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, The Free Press and other publications, Ms. Coleman called these pieces a tour through the restless emotional topography of Los Angeles as glimpsed through the scattered fragments of my living memory.

We find the author laboring as waitress, bartender, editor of a sleazy men’s magazine–caught up in militant revolutionary politics and witnessing even more violent social upheaval in the form of the Watts and Rodney King riots. As Publisher’s Weekly noted, Her extraordinary eye for detail and personal perspective universalizes her experience and makes her observations both trenchant and reliable.