Inventing Paradise

The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles

De: Paul Haddad

Narrado por: Paul Haddad

Inventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles traces the improbable rise of Los Angeles through the prism of six visionaries who had outsize influence on the city’s 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 Davis’s classic work City of Quartz, Paul Haddad (Freewaytopia and 10,000 Steps a Day in L.A.) debunks many myths about the City of Angels with a wildly entertaining narrative that sheds new light on the fascinating birth of modern Los Angeles. Power came from a select few, whose triumphs, scandals, and correspondence are well documented in Inventing Paradise, along with other little-known facts about L.A. history, including:

• How Los Angeles Times chief Harry Chandler pushed eugenics and endorsed “white spots”
• Henry Huntington’s and Moses Sherman’s trolley systems and the extortion-type practices that led to their expansion
• When Los Angeles was so desperate for water, it hired a miracle worker who promised rain
• How L.A.’s power elite peddled the lie that the Owens River used to flow into Los Angeles and rightfully belonged to the city
• When Los Angeles annexed a city in which monkeys cast votes
• How Venice, California, was not the first Venice, California
• William Mulholland’s game-changing construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which raised the city’s population ceiling from 250,000 to 2.5 million

Haddad 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 a city that should not exist—and yet it does. Through Inventing Paradise, Haddad shows listeners 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.

©2024 Paul Haddad (P)2024 Santa Monica Press

Reseñas de la Crítica

L.A. TIMES BESTSELLER

“Historian Haddad (Freewaytopia) offers a meticulous group biography of six powerful men who were behind the supercharged growth of Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century. Though Haddad describes these men as a ‘Gilded Age-reared oligarchy’ and ‘voracious capitalists,’ his aim is to add depth to one-dimensional negative depictions of them by highlighting the monumental nature of their ambitions. . . . L.A. history buffs will find much to engage them here.”—Publishers Weekly

“The author’s writing is colorful and lively, as befits this story of a special frontier place and its incredible creators. . . . Inventing Paradise is also very much a story of the dark side of Los Angeles’ colorful past. That history includes chicanery, falsehoods, outright fraud, and racism. . . . Haddad intends to bring ‘order out of chaos’ in explaining the history of LA through the golden age of its rise and its often unscrupulous founders. The book is well organized, unlike the city of Los Angeles itself! Inventing Paradise is annotated, has a bibliography, illustrations, and a list of annexations and consolidations.”—New York Journal of Books

“Paul Haddad’s Inventing Paradise is an enthralling, deeply researched account of the leaders of industry who built a small, agrarian riverside village into one of America’s largest, strangest, most alluring cities. This is a story of speculation, trickery, and greed as well as earnest, almost realized visions of a true and accessible Utopia. The research is astounding, the writing propulsive, heartfelt, and even funny. Like the best histories, this work is about who and where we are, not only recounting the past but also illuminating the future.”—Jeff Hobbs, author, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace (L.A. Times Book Prize winner)

Citations

Enlightened about who got roads named. About Times ... There could be more in depth story

Captivating drive

I wish my drive to work took longer! What a story! Haddad has a way of making these figures - most known to us already- understandable. He provides insight on their motives driven by heritage, fear, greed, legacy and love. If you love learning about our Los Angeles - this book will help you appreciate our city in a much wider sense.