"Can I have your autograph? In 1906, eccentric City Librarian Charles Lummis launched the Autograph collection of the Los Angeles Public Library. His goal was two-fold: document the times and make L.A. famous by getting signatures from the 'People who count.' Inspired by the original collection--while turning it on its head--MacArthur Fellow and author/scholar Josh Kun explores what it means to leave your mark on a city. Kun takes the concept of the autograph book way beyond names signed on forget-me-not pages--Los Angeles itself becomes the autograph book, a sprawling landscape of grassroots signatures, markings, tags, handprints, and other attempts to be seen and to be remembered. In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Kun and Los Angeles Public Library librarians update the Autograph Collection for the 21st Century with signatures and messages from everyone from John Muir to Skid Row artist Shugga, Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Booker T. Washington to L.A.s billboard queen Angelyne, plus graffiti, visual art, photographs, and the autographs of dozens of everyday Angelenos. The final pages are blank, waiting for you to leave your own mark on the city of signatures"--Page [4] of cover. This work includes the autographs of the following people: "Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Fernando Valenzuela, John Muir, Roy Choi, Langston Hughes, Henry Holt, Lynell George, Mister Cartoon, Ambrose Bierce, Gajin Fujita, Angelyne, L. Frank Baum, Gary Leonard, Katharine Lee Bates, Cheech Marin, Kari Barba, Hellen Keller, Estevan Oriol, Mercedes Dorame, Carlos Bulosan, Father Greg Boyle, John Rechy, Xavier Cougat, Samuel Gompers, The Stitchin' Sistahz quilt circle, Eugene V. Debs, Naima J. Keith, Jane Addams, Sandra De la Loza, Norman Lear, Charles Bukowski, Barbara Carrasco, Kulapat Yantrasast, William Henry Drake, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Shugga, Van Dyke Parks, Shizu Saldamando, Jo Mora, Phantom Street Artist, Socorro Herrera, Leo Limón, Lillie Devereaux Blake, Liberace, Naomi Hirahara, Arna Bontemps, Richard Montoya, Peter Shire, Charles W. Chesnutt, Aisha Ali, Omar Offendum, Abbot Kinney, Booker T. Washington, Ron Finley, Julia Bogany, Suzanne Lummis, Chaz Bojórquez , Susan A. Phillips, and the people of Los Angeles"--Page [4] of cover.