Inventing Paradise

<p><i><b>Inventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles</b></i> 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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>In the tradition of Mike Davis’s classic work <i>City of Quartz</i>, Paul Haddad (<i>Freewaytopia</i> and <i>10,000 Steps a Day in L.A.</i>) debunks many myths about the City of Angels with a wildly entertaining narrative that sheds new light on the fascinat