Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles

The smog didn’t come from the outside—it came from within.

On July 26, 1943, a mysterious haze blanketed downtown Los Angeles. Office workers rubbed their eyes, traffic cops vanished into the fog, and rumors swirled of enemy sabotage. But the truth was far more insidious: the smog was a byproduct of Southern California’s own booming, car-obsessed, suburban lifestyle.

In this gripping history, journalists Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly trace the rise of Los Angeles’s air pollution crisis—fro...