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 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.

Freewaytopia: How Freeways Shaped Los Angeles explores how social, economic, political, and cultural demands created the web of freeways whose very form--futuristic, majestic, and progressive--perfectly exemplifies the City of Angels.

From the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which began construction during the Great Depression, to the Century Freeway, completed in 1993, author Paul Haddad provides an entertaining and thought-provoking history of the 527 miles of roadways that comprise the Los Angeles freeway system.

Each of Los Angeles's twelve freeways receives its own chapter, and these are supplemented by Off-Ramps--sidebars that dish out pithy factoids about Botts' Dots, SigAlerts, and all matter of freeway lexicon, such as why Southern Californians are the only people in the country who place the word the in front of their interstates, as in the 5, or the 101.

Freewaytopia also explores those routes that never saw the light of day. Imagine superhighways burrowing through Laurel Canyon, tunneling under the Hollywood Sign, or spanning the waters of Santa Monica Bay. With a few more legislative strokes of the pen, you wouldn't have to imagine them--they'd already exist.

Haddad notably gives voice to those individuals whose lives were inextricably connected--for better or worse--to the city's freeways: The hundreds of thousands of mostly minority and low-income residents who protested against their displacement as a result of eminent domain. Women engineers who excelled in a man's field. Elected officials who helped further freeways . . . or stop them dead in their tracks. He pays tribute to the corps of civic and state highway employees whose collective vision, expertise, and dedication created not just the most famous freeway network in the world, but feats of engineering that, at their best, achieve architectural poetry. And let's not forget the beauty queens--no freeway in Los Angeles ever opened without their royal presence.

Freewaytopia is part colorful lore, part civic and historical critique, and part homage to the most famous freeways in the world.

LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER

Updated and Expanded Second Edition Features Six New Walking Adventures!

10,000 Steps a Day in L.A. is for urban adventurers with a passion for healthy living who are also eager to explore Los Angeles--from its most legendary locations to its more hidden, unsung, and quirky sites.

In this first-ever book to explore the 10,000-steps lifestyle in Los Angeles, author Paul Haddad takes readers on a journey through the city's streets, beaches, mountains, rivers, reservoirs, and parks. He includes 10,000-step walks from throughout the Southland, from Simi Valley to the South Bay, and Pasadena to Pacific Palisades.

Tread the grounds of a defunct Disney attraction called Dwarfland. Trace the extinct canals of Venice Beach. Stroll the shortest Main Street in America. Discover hidden streams, secret murals, lost cities, Hollywood haunts, houses made of stone, and parks that time forgot!

The second edition of 10,000 Steps a Day in L.A. features:

- 57 walks containing 10,000 steps

- Detailed maps and directions

- Descriptions of the terrain, walking surface, and dog-friendliness of each walk

- Ideal picnic spots

- Parking suggestions

- Sidebars with colorful trivia and anecdotes

Most importantly, 10,000 Steps a Day in L.A. offers a sense of fun and discovery about Los Angeles that makes the goal of 10,000 steps easy to attain. Readers need only bring their feet--pedometers are optional!

For Dodger fans, the years 1977 to 1981 mark the team's glory days, and High Fives, Pennant Drives, and Fernandomaniachronicles the highlights and disappointments that marked those four tumultuous seasons.

Told from lifelong fan Paul Haddad's perspective, the story of the Dodgers during this time period is enhanced by transcripts of radio and TV calls that are woven into his personal recollections, capturing famed Dodgers sportscaster Vin Scully at the top of his game.

From Jerry Ruess's no-hitter and Rick Monday's epic homer against Montreal to the magical rookie year of Fernando Valenzuela and the 1981 World Series, all of the famous Dodger moments are commemorated in great detail.

In addition to the chronological narrative, each chapter contains lists, trivia, sidebars, and interesting statistics that make the exciting culture and fan frenzy that surrounded the Dodgers' last great dynasty come to life.

It is October 1957. A time of Eisenhower conformity, police and mob strongholds, and Red Scare paranoia. A relic of Hollywood's Golden Age, the aging Paradise Palms Hotel is on the brink of change. David Shapiro-eldest son of recently widowed Max Shapiro-has assumed a leadership role. But the more he digs into the hotel's business, the more he questions who his father is. It's not just the tenuous ties to gangster Mickey Cohen, who is trying to commandeer the Palms, but also the sudden appearance of a mysterious African American guest named Rae Lynn, who improbably rises in stature. As long-buried secrets come to light, David's battle to keep the family intact takes a tragic turn. His actions mirror an America lurching from the surface simplicity of the '50s to the turmoil of the 1960s in this riveting neo-noir family saga.

Los Angeles, 1978. Skateboarding and tanned bods rule the SoCal landscape. Compared to his groovy peers, 13-year-old Adam Lipsitz is an outcast. He is too skinny, too pale, too brainy. To make matters worse, just as his parents are separating, he's cast off to Kamp Kickapoo, where he faces the prospect of being tormented by a bully named Worm for six interminable weeks. Then... a horrific event rocks Adam's world. And there's no turning back. How Adam deals with being bullied forms the core of Skinny White Freak. By summer's end, Adam will make the journey from kid to young adult, striving to replace fear with courage, cynicism with empathy, and low self-esteem with self-acceptance.