As the Palisades and Eaton fires thrust Los Angeles’s natural environment into the national spotlight, acclaimed essayist D.J. Waldie turns his eyes to the elements of Los Angeles—earth, water, air, and fire—exploring the foundations of the city with his trademark wisdom, elegance, and incisiveness.

Elements of Los Angeles, the third volume in D.J. Waldie’s trilogy of essay collections centered on his search for a sense of place in Los Angeles, evokes the classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire. After the tragic wildfire season of early 2025 ravaged Los Angeles, the idea of how the city fits into the space it occupies and the elements that infuse and surround it are more pertinent than ever.

In Where We Are Now, Becoming Los Angeles, and now in Elements of Los Angeles, Waldie has assembled a panorama of a city both tragic and intensely moving.

Called “one of the most respected contemporary voices on life in Southern California,” by the New Yorker and “one of the most artful authors writing about Los Angeles today” by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Waldie elegantly blends history, memoir, and contemplative observation, providing a portrait of the elements that illuminates the city as a whole.

No one realizes Los Angeles better than D.J. Waldie, the prose-poet laureate of the land and the air and the light - Lawrence Weschler, author of Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

Los Angeles’ elegant Observer - Jim Newton, LMU magazine

No more keen observer of life in Los Angeles - Ken Bernstein, The Planning Report