Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past - Hardcover

"What distinguishes Whitewashed Adobe is not only its solid scholarship but also its author's lively prose style, sharp and often ironic wit, and willingness to tweak the sensibilities of his fellow scholars. Here is a monograph that has been made fully accessible, highly readable and both challenging and illuminating." - Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Review "A fascinating and surprising collection of essays." - World Wide Work "This magnificent book, the fruit of a decade of original research, is a landmark in Los Angeles's difficult conversation with its past. Deverell brilliantly exposes the white lies and racial deceits that have for too long reigned as municipal 'history.'" - Mike Davis"

Chronicling the rise of Los Angeles through shifting ideas of race and ethnicity, William Deverell offers a unique perspective on how the city grew and changed. "Whitewashed Adobe" considers six different developments in the history of the city - including the cementing of the Los Angeles River, the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1924, and the evolution of America's largest brickyard in the 1920s. In an absorbing narrative supported by a number of previously unpublished period photographs, Deverell shows how a city that was once part of Mexico itself came of age through appropriating - and even obliterating - the region's connections to Mexican places and people.