The trial of Clarence Darrow. Do you recognize the young Jerry Giesler to Darrow’s left? 

In one folder, I found a map that a pressman drew on a piece of scrap paper showing where he was when the bomb went off and how he got out of the building. In another, there was Jim Bassett’s interview with May Goodan, Harry Chandler’s daughter, in which she talked about taking drives with her father through the barley fields outside Los Angeles and how he would say that it would all be homes someday.

Rather than focusing exclusively on retelling the story, I have been looking at questions such as “Who owns history?” “Who gets to tell the story?” and “Why is memory so fragile?” How is it that an incident that was so thoroughly documented at the time has been so completely recast over the last century? Why is it that most people in Los Angeles today have no idea precisely where the bombing occurred? Or why?

Jimmie Fidler fans, don’t worry. He and Tom Treanor and Matt Weinstock and Paul Coates will be back. But right now my life is all about research.