For nearly sixty years, Bud Furillo wrote and talked about sports in Southern California. For fifteen of those years, he authored a popular column for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called The Steam Room, which gave him the nickname that lasted him for the rest of his life: the Steamer.”As a reporter, columnist, editor, and pioneer of sports talk radio, the Steamer dished out insight and understanding to Southern California sports fans while Los Angeles grew into a sports empire....

Profane, irascible, and beloved, California political icon John Burton has stood for nearly 60 years as the state Democratic Party's beating heart and one of its leading voices for social justice.As an assemblyman, congressman, state senator, party chairman and street-fighting activist from San Francisco, Burton as a blue-collar liberal has been at the forefront of the mainstream Democratic movement in its battles on behalf of the poor, against a disastrous foreign ...