Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles

Near the conclusion of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles these words are attributed to an actress: “I’ll tell you what Los Angeles is: it’s nothing. It doesn’t exist.” This pretty much covers how helpful this book will be in understanding a city that millions of people live and work in. Not very.

The subtitle of the book is strange in that little time or effort is expended in explaining the political power structure of the city and county. That’s why I assumed the interestingly named Rosecrans Baldwin would spend his time explaining what it’s like to LIVE in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the virtually unstructured work is filled with random thoughts and no clear message.

How exactly random are the thoughts? Well, Baldwin spends a good number of pages inexplicably filling the reader in on the “village of Montecito.” That’s a village of millionaires which just happens to be ninety-two miles away from Los Angeles by car. And the point of this is?

I happened to have lived in Los Angeles and could not find even a trace of that city here.

Everything Now is not only a lost opportunity; it’s a hard slog of a read.