{"product_id":"inventing-paradise","title":"Inventing Paradise","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eInventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the tradition of Mike Davis’s classic work \u003ci\u003eCity of Quartz\u003c\/i\u003e, Paul Haddad (\u003ci\u003eFreewaytopia\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e10,000 Steps a Day in L.A.\u003c\/i\u003e) 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 \u003ci\u003eInventing Paradise\u003c\/i\u003e, along with other little-known facts about L.A. history, including:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cli\u003eHow \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e chief Harry Chandler pushed eugenics and endorsed “white spots”\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eHenry Huntington’s and Moses Sherman’s trolley systems and the extortion-type practices that led to their expansion\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhen Los Angeles was so desperate for water, it hired a miracle worker who promised rain\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eHow L.A.’s power elite peddled the lie that the Owens River used to flow into Los Angeles and rightfully belonged to the city\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhen Los Angeles annexed a city in which monkeys cast votes\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eHow Venice, California, was not the first Venice, California\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWilliam Mulholland’s game-changing construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which raised the city’s population ceiling from 250,000 to 2.5 million\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHaddad 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLos Angeles is a city that should not exist—and yet it does. Through \u003ci\u003eInventing Paradise\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57241331466622,"sku":"NW9781595801272","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9781595801272.jpg?v=1778549185","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/en-usa\/products\/inventing-paradise","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}