
Unreal Estate : Money, Ambition, and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles
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Description
Michael Gross is the preeminent chronicler of Americas rich and powerful, most recently in 740 Park and Rogues Gallery.Now, he goes west to uncover the very secret history of Los Angeles, specifically those wealthiest and most private of enclaves Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills, and Beverly Parkthrough their most mind-boggling estates, and the fascinating, fabulous folks who created and populate them.
Gross begins his epic tale with the sordid mob-driven history of the newest mega-mansion district in L.A., Beverly Park, (home to among others Magic Johnson, Barry Bonds, Rod Stewart, Mark Wahlberg, Reba McIntyre, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Samuel L. Jackson, Sly Stallone, Richard Zanuck, and relatives of an Indonesian dictator and Saudi Arabias king). He then flashes back to the creation of this fabled district, built on dusty lima bean fields and carved out of the rugged impassible mountains between the city and the sea. Using the century-long evolution from adobe huts to $100 million mansions as the baseline of the story, he reveals how a few powerful and often ruthless oil and railroad magnates imposed their idyllic vision of the good life on the Los Angeles landscape to create the legendary communities known as the Platinum Triangle.
Gross goes on to give vivid, riveting accounts of the most lavish of the many lavish houses that started springing up almost immediately (with only a brief slowdown during the Depression). But the stories of these homes are just a window onto the lives of their owners and occupants over the course of the twentieth century, and onto the bigger story of a people and a storied region that have become, in Grosss words, the Mecca of self-invention.
As one might imagine, there is a truly glittering cast of characters. Apart from the many Hollywood stars who have passed through these housesDouglas Fairbanks Jr., Harold Lloyd, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, George Hamilton, Tony Curtis, Cher, to name just a fewyou will meet decadent Spanish land-grant families, desperado oilmen and railroad titans, the countrys first all-powerful corporate legends, con men and pyramid schemers, porn magnates, and Arab potentates, not to mention contemporary tabloid luminaries from the worlds of business and entertainment. Taken altogether, their stories read like a cross between Valley of the Dolls, Hollywood Babylon, and Grosss own 740 Parkwith a little of the film Chinatown thrown in too.
Los Angeles provides Michael Gross with his broadest canvas yet; Unreal Estate will surprise, fascinate, and most of all entertain you with a story you dont know about a place you think you do.
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Gross begins his epic tale with the sordid mob-driven history of the newest mega-mansion district in L.A., Beverly Park, (home to among others Magic Johnson, Barry Bonds, Rod Stewart, Mark Wahlberg, Reba McIntyre, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Samuel L. Jackson, Sly Stallone, Richard Zanuck, and relatives of an Indonesian dictator and Saudi Arabias king). He then flashes back to the creation of this fabled district, built on dusty lima bean fields and carved out of the rugged impassible mountains between the city and the sea. Using the century-long evolution from adobe huts to $100 million mansions as the baseline of the story, he reveals how a few powerful and often ruthless oil and railroad magnates imposed their idyllic vision of the good life on the Los Angeles landscape to create the legendary communities known as the Platinum Triangle.
Gross goes on to give vivid, riveting accounts of the most lavish of the many lavish houses that started springing up almost immediately (with only a brief slowdown during the Depression). But the stories of these homes are just a window onto the lives of their owners and occupants over the course of the twentieth century, and onto the bigger story of a people and a storied region that have become, in Grosss words, the Mecca of self-invention.
As one might imagine, there is a truly glittering cast of characters. Apart from the many Hollywood stars who have passed through these housesDouglas Fairbanks Jr., Harold Lloyd, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, George Hamilton, Tony Curtis, Cher, to name just a fewyou will meet decadent Spanish land-grant families, desperado oilmen and railroad titans, the countrys first all-powerful corporate legends, con men and pyramid schemers, porn magnates, and Arab potentates, not to mention contemporary tabloid luminaries from the worlds of business and entertainment. Taken altogether, their stories read like a cross between Valley of the Dolls, Hollywood Babylon, and Grosss own 740 Parkwith a little of the film Chinatown thrown in too.
Los Angeles provides Michael Gross with his broadest canvas yet; Unreal Estate will surprise, fascinate, and most of all entertain you with a story you dont know about a place you think you do.
show more
Product details
- Hardback | 533 pages
- 163 x 242 x 42mm | 885g
- 01 Nov 2011
- BROADWAY BOOKS
- New York, NY, United States
- English
- black & white illustrations, maps, frontispiece
- 076793265X
- 9780767932653
- 1,079,443
Review quote
"A juicy, breezily told social history of La La Land . . ." -"Kirkus "
"Juicy cocktail-party anecdotes . . . fill "Unreal Estate." "-"Details"
"Scandal filled" -Degen Pener, "The Hollywood Reporter"
"Juicy" -"Curbed
"
"Gross writes with an aficionado's zeal . . ." -"Publishers Weekly"
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"Juicy cocktail-party anecdotes . . . fill "Unreal Estate." "-"Details"
"Scandal filled" -Degen Pener, "The Hollywood Reporter"
"Juicy" -"Curbed
"
"Gross writes with an aficionado's zeal . . ." -"Publishers Weekly"
show more
About Michael Gross
Michael Gross is the best-selling author of 740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building, Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Lust, Lies, Greed and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women and other books. A Contributing Editor of Travel + Leisure he has also written for major publications around the world, including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, New York, Esquire and GQ. He lives in New York City.
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