The Brief

Before the internet made book reviews widely accessible, where would curious minds go to find information about a new novel's subject matter or a plot?

If you lived in the Los Angeles area, you could reference the Los Angeles Public Library's index of fiction book review cards. The reviews, a collection of thousands of index cards, contain library staff members' thoughts and opinions about new fiction releases that the library carried. The library system was used starting in the 1920s and into the 1980s.

Robert Anderson, who has worked as a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library since 1980, says the staff review cards were a handy tool that library staff used to answer specific questions the public had about different books.

"In the the pre-internet days, when you couldn't just Google something, if people called and said, 'I've heard about this book and I just want to know what it's about,' you could pull out the card and read it to them or show it to them if they were in person," Anderson said.

The reviews, along with being a helpful public tool, also helped staff pick which books the LAPL would order for their shelves. "They didn't always write reviews for every book, but it was a major way they made the decision on what to buy, particularly for newer authors," Anderson said. If a staff member reviewed a book favorably, they were more likely to carry the title and order multiple copies, he said.

In a recent video posted to the library's social accounts, Anderson describes the review cards and walks viewers through their archive. Although the cards are readily available to the public, housed in large drawers near the Central Library reference desk, Anderson said that the video, which was posted on Friday, will introduce most people to the collection.

"They're in these drawers, but they're not drawers that have a big label saying, 'read these 100-year-old staff reviews,' " he said.

Anderson said the library still has its entire collection of staff reviews — both books rejected and accepted by the library — from between the 1950s and 1980s. But he said the rejections from before the 1950s were discarded just before he started working at the library. "I think if I had been here, I would have found a box or something to put them in and held on to them," he said.

The bygone review process was simple: On an index card, library staff would handwrite or type up a short synopsis of a book they read and give their personal review of it. The staff member would then indicate: whether they thought the library should carry the book, how many copies of the book the library should procure, and other details, such as an evaluation of the text's "literary merit." The cards offered adjectives that the reviewer could underline to indicate how the story might affect readers emotionally.

An after-hours view of the Los Angeles Public Library's "main floor" in June, 1926.

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Los Angeles Public Library Legacy Photo Collection

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For example, for the library's review of Virginia Woolf's 1925 book Mrs. Dalloway, the reviewer underlined "wholesome," "pleasant," and "interesting." Of the staff member's characterization of the book, Anderson said he wasn't sure why the writer considered Woolf's writing — which deals with loneliness and other, often dark human experiences — to be wholesome, "but they did."

Other libraries may keep similar review collections, said Anderson — though he wasn't aware of any — but he noted that library space is often an issue for housing extensive physical indexes. The San Francisco Public Library, another large library system in California, for example, does not keep an archive of this kind, according to Andrea Grimes, the program manager for book arts and special collections at SFPL. But, she noted, it has saved other old card catalogs made by SFPL librarians.

The Los Angeles Public Library's index of staff review cards isn't used regularly anymore, Anderson said. But he said the system now serves as a historical record of both the books, some almost 100 years old, as well as the cultural views held by the book-loving library staff of the time.

" They've become an interesting reflection on not just the books themselves, but on the library staff who wrote these reviews and the attitudes prevalent in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, on particular subjects," Anderson said. "Just in the short little pieces of writing on these cards, you can find a lot about the particular time when these reviews were written and about the people who are writing the reviews."
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Orange County Registrar of Voters is sending teams to emergency shelters to make sure people can still can vote in the June 2 primary even if they are under evacuation orders because of the Garden Grove chemical spill threat.

The backstory

Some 40,000-50,000 people in and around Garden Grove were ordered to evacuate last Friday after a tank holding thousands of gallons of a toxic, highly flammable chemical threatened to explode. The evacuation area was sharply reduced Monday evening after public safety officials discovered pressure in the tank had been relieved.

But many Garden Grove and Stanton residents in the immediate vicinity of the tank, owned by the aerospace company GKN, are still under evacuation orders. Some fled their homes without even the bare essentials, much less their mail-in ballots for next week’s election.

How evacuees can vote

If you left your mail-in ballot at home, you can go to any of Orange County’s 38 vote centers and request a replacement ballot. You can find the locations of those centers here.

The O.C. Registrar on Tuesday also sent two teams to the emergency shelters in nearby Fountain Valley — at Freedom Hall and Los Amigos High School — to print replacement ballots for evacuees who need them. Those ballots can be mailed, dropped off at a vote center or placed in one of the county’s official ballot drop boxes. You can find the locations of those drop boxes here.

The drop box at Chapman Sports Park, which is within the evacuation zone, is unavailable. Registrar Bob Page said ballots were collected from the box when evacuations were first ordered. Page said his office has resumed retrieving ballots from two other drop boxes that were within the initial evacuation zone.

Conductor Daniel Harding will take over as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director next year, the organization announced Tuesday.

The appointment follows three years of intense speculation about who would succeed Gustavo Dudamel to oversee the influential orchestra, including concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Ford and with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles.

Harding’s tenure starts in the 2027-28 L.A. Phil season. The Oxford-born conductor is currently music director of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Italy and is well-known in L.A. as a guest conductor.

“ Daniel is a musician favorite during his last couple of times here during that Hollywood Bowl,” Kim Noltemy, L.A. Phil president and CEO, told LAist’s AirTalk Tuesday. “ He's a brilliant musician. He is absolutely committed to the idea of music education and helping develop the audiences of the future.”

Harding said in a statement Tuesday that making music with LA Phil musicians is a thrill and inspiration.

“So many great artists have found possibilities here that don’t exist anywhere else, and I come to California full of excitement for what we will discover and create together,” Harding said.

Harding will be the creative lead behind a team of acclaimed musicians, according to the L.A. Phil.

“This is gonna be the ultimate dream team,” Noltemy told AirTalk.

Esa-Pekka Salonen introduces Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, then 26, back in 2007 as his successor.

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Al Seib

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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That includes Dudamel, who has led the orchestra since 2009 and will make his debut as the director of the New York Philharmonic this year. He was appointed last week as LA Phil’s artistic and cultural laureate.

It also includes LA Phil creative director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was the Phil's music director for 17 years between 1992 and 2009, conductor-in-residence Anna Handler, creative chair John Adams and others.

“We are taking a non-traditional approach to all of the artistic strategy — essentially by having a team of brilliant people working together to create a season that really inspires people and meets various audiences where they are,” Noltemy said.

Harding will conduct eight weeks of programming in his inaugural 2027-28 season, according to the LA Phil. That will increase to 12 weeks of programming in the seasons to follow.

Listen to the interview

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

When it comes to California’s climate future, the most important figure in the state’s chaotic governor’s race may not be any of the candidates on the debate stage. It may not even be outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, or President Donald Trump.

Instead, it might just be Chevron, the multinational oil company that was founded in the Golden State more than 100 years ago. It is among the largest producers, refiners, and sellers of petroleum products in a state rapidly shifting toward electric vehicles. Depending on which candidate is talking, the company is an example of how Big Oil is strangling consumers or an example of how climate regulations are strangling the state economy.

The behemoth — it reported $12.3 billion in profit last year — took the spotlight last month when an interviewer asked leading Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra about Chevron’s contributions to his campaign. The former state attorney general and Biden-era health secretary gave what seemed to be a candid response:

“Chevron, that’s the problem with politics. They’re not the bad guy. Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron. I need Chevron. My people of the state of California need Chevron … Chevron wants to give me a check, that’s — that’s their prerogative.”

The phrase “I need Chevron” soon appeared in anti-Becerra videos by the likes of climate hawk Jane Fonda, implying that the candidate was saying he needs Chevron to get elected. Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, Becerra’s lead Democratic opponent, urged him to return the contribution and said he is “doing [the] bidding” of Big Oil. Representative Katie Porter, another leading Democrat, said in a statement that she “hasn’t made millions off Big Oil or taken their checks.”

Becerra is not entirely wrong. California consumes around 13 billion gallons of gasoline annually, all of it specifically formulated to meet the state’s stringent clean air standards. Most of it comes from just six refineries, and Chevron owns two that account for one-third of the state’s production. That gives the company and its peers tremendous leverage. But California’s gas consumption has declined by about 15% from a peak in 2004 due to improved fuel economy in conventional vehicles and growing adoption of electric vehicles. It could fall by half over the next two decades.

The primary is June 2. The challenge for the next governor will be to continue the energy transition while retaining the infrastructure needed to move and refine oil. This has never been accomplished in a place as large as California, which was the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2025. The risks are tremendous: If the state moves too quickly, it could create shortages and price spikes for drivers already paying the highest prices in the country. If it moves too slowly, it could lock in decades of air pollution and hinder global climate progress.

“It’s messy,” said Emily Grubert. She is a civil engineer and sociologist at Notre Dame who has studied fossil fuel transitions and advised the state government on oil infrastructure. “As soon as you realize that actually transitioning away from fossil fuels means you have to close things, people get really freaked out.”

Newsom spent much of his governorship going after Big Oil, an effort that included a series of executive actions to restrict fracking in Kern County oil fields. When the war in Ukraine sent gas prices surging, Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature passed a series of bills to stop what he called “price gouging.” These laws empowered a new oil-focused watchdog agency, created a tool that could impose refinery price caps, and required refineries to maintain certain storage reserves, all of which cut profit margins for Chevron and others. The new refinery rules added to multiple carbon taxes that make selling gasoline in California more expensive.

However, there is some evidence refiners have overcharged Californians. Even after accounting for state taxes, environmental fees, and production costs, a gap remains between gas prices in the Golden State and everywhere else. This gap appeared in 2015 after a refinery fire in Torrance and has come to be known as the “mystery gasoline surcharge.” It now averages about $1. Last fall, a state regulator concluded that refiners’ monopoly power may be the reason for the price spikes.

Oil companies accused Newsom of trying to regulate them out of existence, and many threatened to leave. Two major refiners, Wilmington and Benicia, announced last year that they would close their operations, forcing a state that already imports about 60 percent of its oil to rely on imports of gasoline refined in Asia. Chevron relocated its corporate headquarters from the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon to Houston in 2024, and it has delivered a series of ominous warnings this year as climate regulators have revised the state’s almost 15-year-old carbon tax.

“The proposed regulation will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry,” Andy Walls, the president of Chevron’s refinery business, wrote in an open letter to Newsom in March. The implication was clear: unless you relax your regulations, we will leave the state and strand you without gasoline. That would mean paying Asian refiners to produce more of the state’s specific blend, at significant cost.

The Newsom administration spent much of 2025 trying to work out a grand bargain with the industry. The Legislature eased rules governing drilling in Kern County oil fields, helping maintain a stable supply of crude to refineries, It also delayed implementing a refinery profit cap, and allowed the temporary sale of gasoline with higher concentrations of ethanol. The state’s climate regulator has also suggested giving refineries free allowances under the state’s cap-and-trade system, even if it means less money for big projects like high-speed rail and sustainable housing. The idea is to give investors enough certainty that they’re willing to remain in California even as the state uses less gasoline.

Experts believe it will take a lot more than that to manage inevitable changes.

“You actually can’t have a smooth and safe and effective transition without some form of coordinating function for that decline,” said Grubert. She believes a degree of state ownership of refineries will be necessary to keep facilities open if they stop being profitable. The wrong approach, she says, would be to respond to each potential a refinery closure with ad hoc subsidies and state support, since that would allow refiners to extort the state one by one. 

That point was reinforced this month by a report from the California Energy Commission that has not received much notice. The analysis of the state’s shaky fuel system found that “California cannot sustainably manage this transition through repeated crisis interventions at an asset-by-asset level.” It suggested options that included “legal obligations to operate,” “centralized planning of closures,” and “direct state management or ownership of assets.”

The Iran war will accelerate a decline in both the supply of, and demand for, oil. Gas retailers like Chevron are already struggling to find additional imports of refined fuel, and some experts predict shortages if the Strait of Hormuz does not open within weeks. Meanwhile, electric vehicles continue gaining market share, and Newsom plans to roll out subsidies for them this year. Wider adoption of these vehicles, and hybrids, will further crimp demand, making any remaining refineries more likely to shutter.

Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field near Bakersfield is one of the largest oil fields in California. The state’s climate policies have helped reduce gasoline demand by more than 15 percent over the past decade.

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Mark Ralston

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AFP via Getty Images

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All of this helps explain the showdown between the leading Democrats in the governor’s race, who are each trying to find a lane in a field that at one time included more than 50 candidates.

Becerra has given lip service to clean energy, but many public statements suggest a friendliness toward oil producers. As attorney general, he initiated a few lawsuits against petroleum companies, and supported other state climate lawsuits, but punted on major investigations. He has focused his gubernatorial campaign on vows to fight Donald Trump and protect healthcare, and has made controversial promises to freeze utility and insurance rates. On decarbonization, he has noted that “climate action only succeeds if it is affordable, reliable, and fair.”

After the chaos of the early primary, many oil producers have decided that Becerra is their candidate. Chevron last month contributed the maximum allowable amount of $39,200 to his campaign, the first time in a decade it has backed a gubernatorial candidate. Last week, the company contributed another $500,000 to an independent political committee supporting Becerra. California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest driller, also gave $500,000 to a Becerra committee. And gas companies like Sempra are among the donors to an anti-Steyer political committee that has raised more than $24 million.

Steyer, meanwhile, has made attacking Big Oil the focus of his campaign, as it was during his 2020 presidential run. He says he would lower gas prices by activating the refining profit cap that Newsom has declined to use, investigating what is causing high gas prices (something the state has already done), and taxing private jet fuel. When refineries “inevitably” close, he says he will stockpile an oil reserve and import more refined fuel for as long as California needs it.

Steyer has also had to address his own fossil fuel ties. The hedge fund he founded, Farallon Capital, remains a major player in coal power finance abroad, including in Indonesia and Australia. Steyer still holds a stake in the firm, which he left in 2012, but his campaign says he no longer receives dividends from its fossil fuel investments.

California uses a “jungle primary” in which the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party. The latest poll shows Becerra essentially tied with former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, with Steyer trailing at around 15 percent. The most likely outcome is that one of Becerra or Steyer will make it to the general election. (The other Democrats, including Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, trail behind in the double digits.)

Railing against Big Oil has long proven to be good politics in California. But in the wake of Trump’s second election victory, Democrats have sought to downplay climate issues and focus instead on affordability. The question in the governor’s race is how best to achieve that in the long run. Is it better to use a bully pulpit against companies like Chevron in an effort to break their market power, or conciliate them in the hope that they don’t flee?

Mike Madrid, a veteran California political operative, believes Becerra’s approach will resonate more with the young and Latinos, both of whom often decide statewide elections.

“This attack on Chevron, it works for the base Steyer already has,” he said. “Young Latino working-class men are the demographic most affected by gas prices. Do you think they’re saying we need to get rid of Chevron? Of course not.”

Steyer’s campaign may not get him over the line in the primary, but he has at least been consistent. In a 2013 blog post for this very publication, he celebrated the result of the Virginia governor’s race, where a climate-focused Democrat beat a fossil-fuel friendly Republican with help from Steyer’s own war chest.

“A new political dynamic is emerging,” he wrote at the time. “Climate change is a winner, not a loser,” and is “no longer electoral Kryptonite.”

If Chevron has its way, next week’s primary results will prove otherwise.

California foster youth and children who have lost a parent to COVID can now apply for a trust fund to help them begin their adult lives.

The Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance and Empowerment (HOPE) program, created by the state Legislature in 2022, will invest $3,000 per child in a trust fund that they can access when they are 18. About 56,000 children could benefit from this program, according to a state press release.

“For California’s most vulnerable children, early financial support can help counter the long-term impacts of poverty and instability, and create a foundation for long-term financial security,” said California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, who serves as chair of HOPE. “HOPE is designed to provide that equitable access and make a lasting impact.”

Children who have spent at least 18 months in foster care or have had family reunification services terminated, and children who have lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID can apply for funds at hopeaccount.ca.gov.

For more information, contact HopeForChildren@treasurer.ca.gov.