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Los Angeles in the 1930s returns to print an invaluable document of Depression-era Los Angeles, illuminating a pivotal moment in L.A.’s history, when writers like Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were creating the images and associations–and the mystique–for which the City of Angels is still known. Many books in one, Los Angeles in the 1930s is both a genial guide and an addictively readable history, revisiting the Spanish colonial period, the Mexican period, the brief California Republic, and finally American sovereignty. It is also a compact coffee table book of dazzling monochrome photography. These whose haunting visions suggest the city we know today and illuminate the booms and busts that marked L.A.’s past and continue to shape its future.

Editorial Reviews

“My favorite new Los Angeles book “–La Observed

“Reading both is like finding hidden treasures. . . . The San Francisco and Los Angeles guidebooks offer both traditional tours of the city as well as historical writing more closely akin to poetry. These are books that people can read aloud to one another.”–Beyondchron

“More than just a tool to help you find the nearest Presbyterian church or a convenient tennis court, the guides, part of the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, included thoughtful essays on history, life and culture in each destination, as well as blow-by-blow tours through city neighborhoods and other information that in many cases remains at least partially relevant (or interesting) today.”–New York Post

Paperback Writers: Sunlight and shadow in ‘Los Angeles in the 1930s’

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – April 30, 2011 (Excerpt)

Created by FDR in 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project (a small part of the wider Works Progress Administration) was a make-work agency that gave jobs to about 6,500 writers, editors and researchers before closing shop in 1943. The government, in other words, used taxpayers’ money to pay small but welcome salaries to writers. Go figure.

“A triumphant gesture and so noble as to be almost absurd,” said poet W.H. Auden (not a beneficiary), and one imagines the swirl of teapot tempests that an attempt to repeat such a quixotic project would induce today. Yet the writers’ project played its part in the careers of Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren, Ralph Ellison, Tillie Olsen, Richard Wright and Jim Thompson, among many others, and left behind a series of beautiful publications, notably the 81 guides that covered each state and many of the major cities.

“Los Angeles: A Guide to the City and Its Environs” has been reissued as “Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels” in an exact reproduction of the original text, with a nimble and witty introduction by David Kipen and a new jacket featuring a glowing pastoral of downtown’s Union Stationa new building at the time of the guide’s first publication in 1941.

Is this book, as Kipen suggests, “a treasure dragged back from some lost dreamland”? Or a key reference point in the history of writing about Los Angeles, a city whose literary self-consciousness almost from the start involved the myth of an Eden that was supposedly lost? [Read the full article...]

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Vampire Ascending

by Lorelei Bell Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel. [Read More...] – Including an excerpt of the first chapter.

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Product Description

The eagerly awaited new book from the Emmy-winning, Oscar-hosting, Daily Show-anchoring Jon Stewart–the man behind the megaseller America (The Book).

Where do we come from? Who created us? Why are we here? These questions have puzzled us since the dawn of time, but when it became apparent to Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show that the world was about to end, they embarked on a massive mission to write a book that summed up the human race: What we looked like; what we accomplished; our achievements in society, government, religion, science and culture — all in a tome of approximately 256 pages with lots of color photos, graphs and charts.

After two weeks of hard work, they had their book. EARTH (The Book) is the definitive guide to our species. With their trademark wit, irreverence, and intelligence, Stewart and his team will posthumously answer all of life’s most hard-hitting questions, completely unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity, or even accuracy.

About the Author

Jon Stewart was born in New York and lives with his wife and children in New York City.

No. 1 Planet for Alien Tourists

New York Times, September 15, 2010

“Earth (The Book)” is a mock textbook by writers for “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” — or “the authors of the popular television program ‘The John Daly Show’ ,” as they put it in a fake Wikipedia blurb on the book’s back cover. It is conceived as a handy guide for extraterrestrials who arrive on this planet after humanity has become extinct, in case those extraterrestrials want to know what they’re missing. It explains everyday details about how we live(d), from our use of the fork (“a way to hurt food one last time before eating it”) to our wearing of pants. “We put these on one leg at a time,” it says. “You may require a different approach.”

“Earth” adopts a faux-scientific tone to explain the planet, its life forms and their quantifiable characteristics. Like the “Daily Show” this parody delivers wittily framed absurdities in a sweetly deadpan way. So there are statistics. (“Length of day (in days) …… 1.”) There are charts. (Time We Were Willing to Wait for a Baked Potato: from 8 hours in 1900 to 1 second in 2010. Lifetime Food Consumption of First Slices of Wedding Cake: 2.1.)

There is a handsomely illustrated Periodic Table of the Synthetic that includes such elements as Wo (Wite-out), G (Gummi), Jq (Je ne sais quoi), DD (Silicone) and Li (Listerine). And there is a set of F.A.Q.’s (“Future Alien Questions”) for each topic covered here. [Read the full article...]

ISBN: 978-0-9765116-8-7
Size: 8.5″ (W) x 11″ (H)
Pages: 58
Language: English
Binding: Perfect Bound
Interior Color: B&W
Publication Date: Feb 2010
Country: United States

A step-by-step guide to setting up a blog with WordPress, spam-protecting your blog, search engine optimization, and creating web traffic. This a very concise book with a “quick and dirty” approach; it will allow you to set up a professional looking blog within hours. The book has been written while creating http://www.myprofessionalblog.com. See the web site as a reference of what you can do.

Ordering Information

• Copperhill Media, the publisher offers the paperback and eBook version.
• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Also available through Amazon in Great Britain, France, Germany, and other countries.

About This Book

As the title of this book implies – I am referring to the “No-Nonsense” part – I am trying to deliver you a concise description on how to set up your own, professional looking blog without the usual motivational bla-bla combined with superficial information I found in many other books. My approach is “quick and dirty.”

At the time of the writing I have set up numerous blogs, and I have investigated numerous scenarios of how to get a blog useful for one’s purposes.

In my personal case I am in the business of promoting my books, but I also looked into related aspects such as selling my books through my blogs, or even create revenues through my web site with paid advertisement. In the process I found a lot of useless books on the topic, and I deemed it was time to stop the nonsense.

Please be aware that all the information in this book in freely available through the Internet, or through many, more detailed books, but reading this book and following the instructions will save you a lot of time and, after all, aggravation.

This book will give you a crash-course in setting up your blog, and, if you need more than just a basic blog, I have tried to add as many exciting features as possible. I also put an emphasis on search engine optimization (SEO).

Please understand, everything in this book is designed to give you a concise description on blog features without the hassle of reading hundreds of pages, and thus saving you a great amount of time setting up your own blog.

I will not provide you all details, just enough to get you going. The manuals you need – just in case you want to investigate the blog features in more detail – are all available through the Internet, and I will point you to the corresponding web sites. This approach did not only save me a great deal of time writing this book, but it also reflects in the price you pay for it.

Let me stress again, that you do not need to read the full manuals to set up your blog. Just follow my description, and your blog will shine within a few hours of work.

Let me also add another “no-nonsense” aspect: I will deliver you many aspects of optimizing your blog, but I do not guarantee success. Especially, I do not promise a “path to riches” if you are in business to create revenue with your blog. The success of a blog or regular web site depends on many factors not related to the blog setup and operation. Success, just like in any other business, is primarily based on hard and continuous work. Perseverance will pay eventually in one way or the other, but, again, there is no guarantee.

Throughout this book I will refer to one particular web site, myprofessionalblog.com, which is the web site (blog) I designed to write this book, meaning I set up the blog, made screen shots of what I was doing and inserted them into this document.

Everything you see on myprofessionalblog.com is available to you with little effort. In addition, I will post further information, that becomes available after writing this book, on the same blog (And no, unlike many other books with associated web site, you don’t need to register there and/or pay for access).

This About This Book section is also part of myprofessionalblog.com. My intention is to provide sufficient information on my book to make you comfortable with the decision to buy it – or not.

This being said, if you are in business to find a totally free solution for your blog, do not buy this book! My book is primarily about creating a professional blog with little expenses (roughly $120 – 200 per year), but it is not totally free.

If you want your blog totally free I recommend setting one up through various services such as Google, Yahoo, WordPress.com, and others. Please be aware that these services will give you a free, but limited blog, i.e. without all the special features you see on myprofessionalblog.com. If you don’t need the special features, i.e. you just want to write posts, you will be just fine using these services.

Another reason, not to buy this book, would be that you already use an Internet service provider (ISP), have your own web site, but your ISP does not support WordPress. WordPress, an online blog development tool, is an essential part of this book.

If you have neither an ISP nor a web site, but want your own, professional blog, I will explain how to get there quickly and easily.

Last, but not least, let me explain that, while I am very familiar with setting up blogs, I am certainly not the top-most expert on the topic. If you have comments, new insights, and/or betterment suggestions, please feel free to post them on myprofessionalblog.com, and I will make sure your input will reflect on the additions to the web site.

Table of Content

Why WordPress?……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

The Two Versions Of WordPress………………………………………………………………………. 5

Get Your Free Blog Through WordPress.Com…………………………………………………… 6

How Do I Install WordPress?……………………………………………………………………………. 6

Which Service Provider Should I Use?……………………………………………………………… 7

Logging-In to Your WordPress Blog…………………………………………………………………. 7

First Settings……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8

A First Step Toward Search Engine Optimization (SEO)……………………………….. 10

A First Step Toward Protecting Your Web Site………………………………………………. 10

Let’s Add Some Standard Blog Pages……………………………………………………………… 11

One Final Setting Is Necessary……………………………………………………………………….. 14

A First Look At The New Blog…………………………………………………………………………. 14

Changing The Appearance (Theme)………………………………………………………………. 15

Changing The Side Bars (Using Widgets)……………………………………………………….. 19

Editing Pages (Home, About)…………………………………………………………………………. 21

Editing Pages (Contact Us)…………………………………………………………………………….. 22

The First Blog Entry………………………………………………………………………………………… 26

Setting Categories……………………………………………………………………………………………. 27

Managing Categories………………………………………………………………………………………. 28

Add Your Tags!……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 29

Deleting Posts (Hello World)………………………………………………………………………….. 30

Let’s Fill Up This Blog!……………………………………………………………………………………. 30

Making Your Blog Spam-Free…………………………………………………………………………. 30

Search Engine Optimization…………………………………………………………………………… 33

The SEO Plug-In………………………………………………………………………………………………. 34

Creating Hyperlinks To/From Your Blog……………………………………………………….. 36

Registering Your Blog……………………………………………………………………………………… 36

Posting Online Press Releases………………………………………………………………………… 37

Participating In Social Networks…………………………………………………………………… 38

Adding Comments To Forums And Blogs……………………………………………………….. 39

Google Ads………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 39

Creating Income With Your Blog……………………………………………………………………. 40

Affiliate Programs…………………………………………………………………………………………… 40

E-Commerce…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 41

Further Blog Improvements…………………………………………………………………………… 42

Incorporating Affiliate Program Ads……………………………………………………………… 42

Add Video Clips From YouTube……………………………………………………………………… 43

Add Google Gadgets………………………………………………………………………………………… 45

More Cool Plug-Ins………………………………………………………………………………………….. 47

Adding A Slide Show……………………………………………………………………………………….. 47

A Cool Navigation Tool……………………………………………………………………………………. 50

Social Network Connection…………………………………………………………………………….. 52

Adding E-Commerce……………………………………………………………………………………….. 53

Help References………………………………………………………………………………………………. 55

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