Dreamers and Schemers - by Barry Siegel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How one man brought the Olympics to Los Angeles, fueling the city's urban transformation.

Dreamers and Schemers chronicles how Los Angeles's pursuit and staging of the 1932 Olympic Games during the depths of the Great Depression helped fuel the city's transformation from a seedy frontier village to a world-famous metropolis. Leading that pursuit was the "Prince of Realtors," William May (Billy) Garland, a prominent figure in early Los Angeles. In important respects, the story of Billy Garland is the story of Los Angeles. After arriving in Southern California in 1890, he and his allies drove much of the city's historic expansion in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Then, from 1920 to 1932, he directed the city's bid for the 1932 Olympic Games. Garland's quest to host the Olympics provides an unusually revealing window onto a particular time, place, and way of life. Reconstructing the narrative from Garland's visionary notion to its consequential aftermath, Barry Siegel shows how one man's grit and imagination made California history.

From the Back Cover

"Dreamers and Schemers brings alive the rollicking era when Los Angeles came of age, even as the world plunged into war and the Great Depression. What a remarkable tale. This is masterful storytelling."--Gay Talese

"Barry Siegel brilliantly evokes a complex drama: the misery of the Great Depression, a flood of desperate migrants coming into Southern California, relentlessly optimistic boosterism promoting the first summer Olympics on US soil in nearly thirty years--and an extraordinary, larger-than-life character at the center of the story."--Adam Hochschild, author of Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays

"Dreamers and Schemers is engrossing, outlandish, fascinating, and a reading delight. It pulls the curtain back on a great piece of LA history--the 1932 Olympics--and manages to tell the entire story of the city's rise. A pleasure for anyone who loves a well-told tale."--Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book

Review Quotes

"Wonderfully written narrative. . . . Recommended."-- "CHOICE"

"A fascinating tale."-- "New York Times Book Review"

"A gripping portrayal of [Billy] Garland's marathon campaign to get the Games."-- "Los Angeles Times"

About the Author

Barry Siegel, winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and the author of seven previous books, is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He now directs the literary journalism program at the University of California, Irvine.