25-cent coffee? In Burbank? In 2011?

     Today I found out that you can get fish and chips just like they served at the Don's Restaurants in Burbank and Victorville before they closed. A fish and chips plate and coffee for under $8 all day? Amazing!

Here's one you won't be able to put down. One of the best books on LA. corruption in the first half of the 20th Century

I swear, this is like reading a Raymond Chandler novel, but it's all real! I had no idea where this book was going to take me, but I couldn't jump off the train. In the end, I knew so much more about life in the '20s, '30s and '40s in Los Angeles. I loaned my copy to another L.A.-ophile and he won't give it back to me. That's OK, the prices are dropping now, so I'll buy a couple more. Let me know what you think of it. By the way, you can read excerpts by clicking on the Amazon.com link below. I think I read a third of the book online for free before I had to get a copy of my own.

The author of this book awakened me more than any other book.

It was 1984 when I heard Jonathan Kwitny give a luncheon speech at the Investigative Reporters and Editors National Conference in Miami. I was dumbfounded when he described what he had learned --- mostly through government sources --- about U.S. foreign policy. I had been to Central America the year before and I now realized that I was blind --- ignorant to what had been going on down there since the mid '50s. I returned to Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua the next year and I saw things in a completely different way. When

I read the first edition of "Endless Enemies," I learned about similar U.S. involvement in Iran in 1953. I was astounded when I learned for the first time that the CIA had overthrown the country's democratically elected president and re-installed the previous dictator, the Shah of Iran. And there were so many other examples.
The first edition of the book has become a collector's item because it was actually recalled by the publisher as a result of a lawsuit brought on by one of the sources that Kwitny quoted. Subsequent editions included blank areas where the original information had once been. Either edition will enlighten you. It's sad that Kwitny died much too young. His death left a void that has been hard to fill. Needless to say, I recommend the book.