A Confederacy of Heretics examines the explosion of activity associated with the Architecture Gallery, the first gallery in Los Angeles dedicated exclusively to architecture. Instigated by Thom Mayne in the fall of 1979, the Architecture Gallery staged ten exhibitions in as many weeks by both young and established Los Angeles practitioners, featuring the work of Eugene Kupper, Roland Coate, Jr., Frederick Fisher, Frank Dimster, Frank Gehry, Peter de Bretteville, Morphosis (Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi), Studio Works (Craig Hodgetts and Robert Mangurian), and Eric Owen Moss. Another young architect, Coy Howard, opened the events with a lecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, which hosted talks by each exhibiting architect.

In an unprecedented move by the popular press, the events were chronicled in weekly reviews by the critic John Dreyfuss in the Los Angeles Times. Gathering an array of original drawings, models, photographs, video recordings, and commentary alongside new assessments by current scholars, A Confederacy of Heretics aims neither to canonize the participating architects nor to consecrate their unorthodox activities. Rather, the book re-examines the early work of some of Los Angeles'' most well-known architects, charts the development of their most potent design techniques, and documents a crucial turning point in Los Angeles architecture, a time when Angeleno architecture culture shifted from working local variations on imported themes to exporting highly original disciplinary innovations with global reach.

Taken together, the exhibition, symposium, and catalog that comprise A Confederacy of Heretics offer a unique lens through which to analyze a pivotal moment in the development of late twentieth-century architecture.