The world is fascinated by southern California's paradisiacal setting. The casual lifestyle, ever-blooming gardens and courtyard houses that open onto breathtaking vistas never cease to interest architects, homebuyers and architecture enthusiasts. Los Angeles, in particular, has been a hotbed of cutting-edge residential architecture since Frank Lloyd Wright's Mayan-inspired hillside homes of the 1940s, the Case Study Houses of the 1950s and Frank Gehry's chain-link wrapped Santa Monica home from the 1970s. In Brave New Houses Michael Webb illustrates how contemporary architects draw upon and extend the modernist legacy that has come to define southern California's architectural history.