Zev Yaroslavsky, an icon in local politics for four decades, takes readers behind the scenes in his new memoir. (photo by Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/
via Getty Images/courtesy of Zev Yaroslavsky)

Former Los Angeles City Councilman and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was a fixture in local politics for four decades, serving on both the Los Angeles City Council and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Readers can get an up-close and personal look at his life and career in “Zev’s Los Angeles: From Boyle Heights to the Halls of Power. A Political Memoir,” which will be officially released on May 30. They can also meet Yaroslavsky and purchase a signed copy on May 30 from 6-7 p.m. at Chevalier’s Books, 133 N. Larchmont Blvd.

Yaroslavsky said the book is partly an autobiography and partly a history lesson on Los Angeles civic affairs. He takes readers into Los Angeles City Hall and the county Hall of Administration to see how government works and experience first-hand the inner challenges and struggles. He also provides insight into his family history, his youth growing up in Boyle Heights and the Fairfax District, his studies at UCLA and his early days of activism before being elected to the L.A. City Council representing the 5th District in 1975, and later the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1994. Yaroslavsky served on the board of supervisors representing the 3rd District until his retirement in 2014.

“It’s a memoir, but it’s not just about me. It’s about my life, nested in the history of L.A. in the same period. When I talk about L.A. and I talk about things that I did, I also tried to put it in the context of what was going on in L.A. at the time,” Yaroslavsky said. “I tried not to make it too much of a vanity project. I take shots at myself, I talk about the successes I had, the disappointments that I had, the mistakes that I made, mistakes I learned from, basically. I take the reader into the rooms that I was in when some major decisions were made.”

Yaroslavsky said readers will learn how the city secured the 1984 Olympic Games, which were held without using taxpayer money and became the most profitable Olympics in history. He outlines how political leaders addressed scandals within the Los Angeles Police Department and what led to a ban on police chokeholds in the city in 1982, years before they were banned elsewhere throughout the country. Yaroslavsky also gives readers a front-row seat to the battles over land use during the 1970s and 1980s and how the City Council worked to reduce density and preserve commercial corridors like Fairfax and Melrose avenues, Beverly Boulevard and Third Street.

“This was an effort to protect neighborhoods, not to have runaway development, not to have Beverly Centers (a by-right project that did not require council approval) in every neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles,” Yaroslavsky said.

He also outlines major accomplishments during his tenure as a county supervisor, including helping the county avoid bankruptcy in the early 1990s, and ushering through transportation projects such as the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley and the Purple Line Extension project along Wilshire Boulevard. Yaroslavsky was also an ardent supporter of the arts. He helped make the Walt Disney Concert Hall project a reality, and guided improvements at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hollywood Bowl.

“I’m a big believer that any society needs to have cultural arts, whether it’s musical arts or visual arts or literature,” Yaroslavsky said. “The county owns the largest public art institutions in L.A. – the Music Center, the Hollywood Bowl, the museum of natural history and the county museum of art – and it fell upon me to embrace that issue at a time when the infrastructure, our cultural infrastructure, needed to be brought into the 21st century.”

Yaroslavsky, the son of Ukrainian Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s, said the book took seven years to research and write and includes extensive information about his family history. He pays tribute to his grandfather, Shimon Soloveichik, and his parents David and Minna Yaroslavsky, as well as his late wife, Barbara. Yaroslavsky, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and economics from UCLA in 1971 and a master of arts degree in history from UCLA in 1972, also delves into his activism against Soviet imperialism during the 1970s.

“This is much more than a memoir, it’s seeing the city through my eyes,” Yaroslavsky said. “It’s a chance to learn about what inspired me. I learned a lot about myself throughout the [writing] process.”

Yaroslavsky added that readers will recognize many of the events and places that are covered in the 335-page book, and said he hopes people walk away encouraged and with a better appreciation of his efforts to make Los Angeles city and county a better place. “We all had our differences, but we were able to make things happen,” Yaroslavsky said.