A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast's Richard Price-a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central L.A. in the wake of one of the most notorious and incendiary trials of the 1990s. At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force...

Thirty-five years before Barack Obama was elected President, the question of race and the possibility of bridging racial and ethnic barriers was put to a test in an overlooked and untold story in American politics: The 1973 election of Tom Bradley, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city with an overwhelmingly white majority. Tom Bradley’s extraordinary multi-racial coalition redefined Los Angeles, transformed the national dialogue...

With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.