Dale Pitt, who co-wrote with her husband "Los Angeles A to Z," the first encyclopedia on the city and county of Los Angeles, a 1997 local best-seller that was admired for its scholarship and readability, has died. She was 77.
Pitt died of a stroke Aug. 10 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hollywood, said her husband, Leonard Pitt. She was a longtime resident of Mar Vista.
The couple spent six years researching and writing the single-volume reference after Leonard proposed working on a local almanac. His wife later recalled her reaction: "Boooooring."
Instead, she suggested the couple craft an encyclopedia in dictionary form. To research the concept, they queried local librarians, who harrumphed over the absence of such a handy guide.
Dale, a writer and editor, wanted to create a comprehensive work with her husband, a retired Cal State Northridge history professor, that would be fun to read and contain what the couple called "unexpected nuggets."
Between "Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem" and "Zuma County Beach," the encyclopedia includes 2,000 entries in 600 pages. The Pitts tried to cover as much history as possible while being "a little bit eccentric," Dale once said.
There are entries on the rival gangs the Crips and Bloods, a Utopian movement in Tujunga known as "Little Landers," and a society of book lovers called the Zamorano Club.
There is also more expected fare: brief biographies of Los Angeles mayors and celebrities; significant articles on ethnic communities, governmental institutions, culture and politics; and 335 photographs.
The stories of the 88 cities that then made up the county "are told briefly and with enormous grace (after enormous scholarship)," Times reviewer D.J. Waldie wrote in 1997.
Two years ago, The Times chose "Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County" as one of 20 books of "essential reading" about Southern California. Calling the reference "breezily wonderful and authoritative," Times staffers Thomas Curwen and David L. Ulin wrote: "The Pitts know the prerequisite of good storytelling: Just get out of the way and let the facts do all the work."
When the book came out, it was "very popular and well received," Mark Hennessey, owner of the Santa Monica bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls, told The Times on Monday. "It was probably the best book about Los Angeles at the time."
