Steven Falk's California Story, a history and memoir of California, covers the years between his grandparents’ arrival in Redondo Beach in 1935 and the COVID pandemic. Each chapter takes place in a different California location and stories include growing up in the uber-suburb of Lakewood; hardcore punks in the Coachella; KGB agents at Disneyland; fortunes made and lost; YIMBYs, NIMBYs, mountain climbing, surfing; a helicopter assault on Palo Alto; public service and city management; and how Falk unexpectedly wound up being featured in the New York Times.

It's a book about fathers and sons and brothers, compromise and conscience, nature-as-tonic, climate change, how place shapes our lives, profiles of decency, and, of course, California: land of everything.

Bob Hope is Dead recounts Bret Falk's thirty year love affair with American Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. His paintings were influenced by the work of the major artists of Bret's time, and they're all here: Jackson Pollock's drips and spills; Roy Lichtenstein's pulp comic book style; Andy Warhol's high-contrast masterpieces exalting the mundane; Jenny Holzer's profound and public text messaging; Ed Ruscha's deadpan irreverence; Jasper Johns' "Map"; the bold color pallete of Mark Rothko; Robert Rauschenberg's embrace of found materials; the bright colors and graffiti accessibility of Keith Haring; the minimalist school of Ellsworth Kelly; the hard-edged sensibility of Frank Stella; and finally the proto-pop cubism of Stuart Davis.