Social sciences teacher Franky Ortega’s new book “Cold War California” recently won the Grand Prize at the San Francisco Book Festival in an award ceremony in Los Angeles.

“There was some relief (finishing it) but some sense of anxiety wanting to make sure that we had covered all of our bases with respect to content coverage,” Ortega said. “I would comb through, making sure that we had not made any errors.”

Ortega’s book, co-written with Francis Gary Powers Jr. and Christopher Sturdevant, mainly explores the state’s important role during the Cold War. Ortega knows Powers from The Museum of the San Fernando Valley. They worked on the book for almost three years and it was released on May 5. The book focuses on how California became an important part of the United States defense against the Soviet Union and discusses important events and people connected to the Cold War, including politicians, technology and even Hollywood.

Previously, Ortega wrote other books, such as “Encyclopedia from Theory to Practice” and produced a documentary called “Into flight once more” before his current book. Being around these creative projects and working on them made writing a book feel inevitable, he said.

“I’ve always thought I would write a book,” Ortega said. “I had been a main contributor to a college-level economics encyclopedia, produced a documentary streaming on Amazon Prime and various other projects, so I figured writing a book would be nice.”

Working on the book as a teacher, let alone a parent, wasn’t easy for Ortega.

The time spent researching took up a lot of time. According to Ortega, he finds that if someone wants to work on a book involving extensive research, they should be warned that they won’t have a lot of free time. Additionally, if someone does want to get started on this difficult task, he finds the solution quite simple.

“Writing a book can be a lot of hard work,” Ortega said. “You just need to get started.”  

Your donation will support the student journalists of Daniel Pearl Magnet High School and allow us to cover our annual website hosting costs.