“Los Angeles was a big, complex immigrant metropolis and representative of the spirit and political dilemmas of our age — of the late Reagan era,” Ethington said. That moment, both in time and place, “was an important site in global history to account for. So I wanted to do that — address that ‘why?’ But I knew that the city is so vast … That it can’t be easily explained. So you have to attack it from many directions and disciplines.”