
Inventing Paradise
The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles
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Narrated by:
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Paul Haddad
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By:
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Paul Haddad
About this listen
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.
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Critic reviews
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)
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Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of great ambition and enormous greed, both of which, in 1963, would threaten to destroy him. In the end, President Johnson would use power from his personal connections in Texas and from the underworld and from the government to escape an untimely end in politics and to seize even greater power. President Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of the United States, was the driving force behind a conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. In The Man Who Killed Kennedy, you will find out how and why he did it. Political consultant, strategist, and Libertarian Roger Stone has gathered documents and used his firsthand knowledge to construct the ultimate tome to prove that LBJ was not only involved in JFK's assassination, but was in fact the mastermind. With 2013 being the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination, this is the perfect time for The Man Who Killed Kennedy to be available to readers. The research and information in this book is unprecedented, and as Roger Stone lived through it, he's the perfect person to bring it to everyone's attention.
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COMPELLING BOOK - THE CROOKS ARE IN POWER
- By Theo Tsourdalakis on 12-01-13
By: Roger Stone
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My Big TOE: Awakening
- Book One of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics
- By: Thomas Campbell
- Narrated by: Thomas Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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My Big TOE: Awakening, written by a nuclear physicist in the language of contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding.
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What a Trip (but to where?)
- By Michael on 11-26-13
By: Thomas Campbell
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Mythology: Mega Collection
- Classic Stories from the Greek, Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, Mesopotamian and Egyptian Mythology
- By: Scott Lewis
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser, Oliver Hunt
- Length: 31 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you know how many wives Zeus had? Or how the famous Trojan War was caused by one beautiful lady? Or how Thor got his hammer? Give your imagination a real treat. This Mega Mythology Collection of eight audiobooks is for you....
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An interesting set of introductions.
- By Kevin Potter on 05-30-19
By: Scott Lewis
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Caffeine
- How Caffeine Created the Modern World
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 2 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
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Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine’s power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.
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Leaves much to be desired
- By Melody H on 02-02-20
By: Michael Pollan
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The Complete Book of Five Rings
- By: Miyamoto Musashi, Kenji Tokitsu - editor/translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Complete Book of Five Rings is an authoritative version of Musashi's classic The Book of Five Rings, translated and annotated by a modern martial arts master, Kenji Tokitsu. Tokitsu has spent most of his life researching the legendary samurai swordsman and his works, and in this book he illuminates this seminal text, along with several other works by Musashi.
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Best translation I have encountered.
- By DW on 05-27-16
By: Miyamoto Musashi, and others
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This book is awful
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What listeners say about Inventing Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael's
- 09-03-24
Citations
Enlightened about who got roads named. About Times ... There could be more in depth story
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Overall
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Performance
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- Breathe easy
- 07-19-24
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.
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