Anton Wagner (1904-2001) was a geographer, diplomat, journalist, and businessman who lived and worked in Europe and the Americas. In 1932-33 he traveled to Los Angeles to conduct the extensive research that became the basis of Los Angeles: The Development, Life, and Structure of the City of Two Million in Southern California, for which he received a doctorate with distinction from the Geographisches Institut of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel in 1935.

Edward Dimendberg is professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine.

Timothy Grundy is an independent translator based in Los Angeles.

For the first time, Anton Wagner's groundbreaking 1935 book that launched the study of Los Angeles as an urban metropolis is available in English.