Pick of the picture books

It is not easy to capture the spirit of a place as many-sided as the City of Angels, which, as the blurb says, is "equal parts glamour and cataclysm, sunshine and noir". This Side of Paradise (Merrell, £39.95) has been compiled by curators Jennifer A Watts and Claudia Bohn-Spector and art history professor Douglas R Nickel, in a non-chronological format that puts leading photographers such as Herb Ritts and Dennis Hopper alongside Hollywood studio portraits and shots of Muscle Beach. From an 1870s shot of Santa Monica Canyon via the first drive-in cinema in the 1930s, the collection shows the evolution of a city through glitz and violence, plastic surgery, poverty and cars. All of this is set in the context of a surreal landscape.