Inventing Paradise

Inventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angelestraces the improbable rise of Los Angeles through the prism of six visionaries who had outsize influence on the citys growth: Phineas Banning, Harrison Gray Otis, Henry Huntington, Harry Chandler, William Mulholland, and Moses Sherman.In the late 1870s, Los Angeles was a violent, dusty, 29-square-mile pueblo with a few thousand souls, largely unchanged since its founding in 1781. By 1930, its size had swelled to within 96% of its current 468 square miles, housing a staggering 1.2 million people. In just 50 years, L.A. had joined the ranks of other world-class cities.In the tradition of Mike Daviss classic workCity of Quartz, Paul Haddad (Freewaytopiaand10,000 Steps a Day in L.A.)debunks many myths about the City of Angels with a wildly entertaining narrative thatsheds new light on the fascinating birth of modern Los Angeles. Power came from a select few, whose triumphs, scandals, and correspondence are well documented inInventing Paradise,along with other little-known facts about L.A. history,including:How Los Angeles Times chief Harry Chandler pushed eugenics and endorsed white spotsHenry Huntingtons and Moses Shermans trolley systems and the extortion-type practices that led to their expansionWhenLos Angeles was so desperate for water, it hired a miracle worker who promised rainHow L.A.s power elite peddled the lie that the Owens River used to flow into Los Angeles and rightfully belonged to the cityWhenLos Angeles annexed a city in which monkeys cast votesHowVenice, California, was not the first Venice, CaliforniaWilliam Mulhollands game-changing construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which raised the citys population ceiling from 250,000 to 2.5 millionHaddad also covers the heavy costs that came with creating paradise in such a short period of time, including car dependency, environmental problems, and deep-seated inequities between wealthy white Angelenos and people of color due to racist policies. All have left an imprint on present-day Los Angeles.Los Angeles is known as a city that should not existand yet it does. ThroughInventing Paradise, Haddad shows readers that Los Angeles is not a paradise found, but a paradise that was willed into existence, owing to the collective vision of these six Gilded Era-born tycoons.