Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition, and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles

Gross (Rogues’ Gallery) offers a cultural history of wealth in his study of the moguls and mafiosi who developed Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and other ritzy neighborhoods of Los Angeles—with a special focus on the houses they built. The aptly named Greystone (otherwise known as Wayne Manor), for example, was built by a prospector turned oilman, Edward Doheny, and finished in 1928. Greystone housed the Doheny family until the tragic death of son Ned and his friend Hugh Plunkett in what some supposed was a lover’s duel. After the family moved out, Greystone lived on: the makers of There Will Be Blood, based loosely on the life of Edward Doheny, filmed in the basement bowling alley, “which boasted the requisite Prohibition-be-damned bar.” Gross writes with an aficionado’s zeal yet chooses facts selectively for their service to the story. It may take a chapter or two to adjust to a book in which the characters, however memorable, come and go, but the landscape remains the same. However, that’s the point: these houses, totems of wealth and status, inhabited for a season when their inhabitants were flush, are the real characters and mainstays of La La Land. (Nov.)