God Only Knows

God Only Knows: A Field Guide to California Vanity Plates

A personalized license plate is self-declaration in motion — and California has more of them than anywhere else. God Only Knows catalogs hundreds of these small, strange, funny, and touching messages from Golden State drivers, turning a stretch of highway or a parking lot into a gallery of personal expression. Taken together, they assemble a portrait of California in its own words: equal parts inside joke, confession, brag, prayer, and pun, all crammed into seven characters or less.

Part road-trip artifact, part cultural survey, this field guide treats the vanity plate as a genuine American folk form — one that says as much about the state's restless, self-mythologizing spirit as any highway or beach ever could.

6 x 9", 94 pages · Digital offset, perfect bound · 2026