Los Angeles, Capital of the Third World

The author looks at L.A., that incarnation of the American dream, and finds the place and the fantasy radically transformed by the new immigrants from Asia and Latin America, who have been arriving in their millions, both legally and illegally, over the past 20 years. Instead of Hollywood writ large and fantasies of material bliss come true, the author shows the gridlocked freeways, where easy travel is just a memory. He takes us to immigrant neighbourhoods where Bhuddist temples abut Korean supermarkets. He ventures into L.A.'s downtown where the latest breed of local booster persuasively hymns the city as the new capital of the Pacific Rim. And he takes the reader to the Mexican border, where he watches illegals gather before making the crossing into El Norte to an L.A. that is no longer just the stuff of American dreams, but of Mexican, Salvadorean, Guatemalan and Korean dreams as well.The author also wrote "Going to Miami".