Gary Krist chooses three...early-20th-century icons of Los Angeles art and commerce to tell his story in The Mirage Factory. They are William Mulholland from Ireland, the self-taught engineer who brought water to the semidesert city and enabled its explosive growth; D. W. Griffith, the Kentucky-born director who helped fashion a new vocabulary for movie storytelling; and Aimee Semple McPherson, the evangelical preacher from Canada, whose congregation came to number in the tens of thousands because of her adroit mixture of media savvy and personal charisma ... As he moves back and forth among his subjects, Krist draws upon some of the best books about the era and its people, enriching them with a virtuoso deploying of detail gathered from deep dives into primary material. Some of these events and individuals are more familiar than others. Griffith’s career has been the subject of numerous studies and the saga of the Los Angeles water wars is, in a distorted form, familiar to anyone who has seen Chinatown Only McPherson’s story is more of a local phenomenon.

Krist has previously profiled the growth of New Orleans and Chicago. Here he tracks the great expansion of Los Angeles between 1904–30 as an 'implausible city.' It has no natural harbor, it is surrounded by deserts, and its weather is often scorching. Most importantly, access to fresh water is a constant problem ... Krist presents a revealing...exploration of the growth of a great city and the lives and work of three visionaries who helped shape it.

The Mirage Factory...looks at early–20th century L.A. through the life stories of three influential individuals: William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith and Aimee Semple McPherson ... While these still-consequential figures are well known to California history enthusiasts (and to a no doubt diminishing sliver of the public), Krist prides himself, as any good historian does, on digging into the archives and uncovering long-lost details of his subjects’ lives. With this book, Krist has succeeded in creating a colorful and fresh narrative of L.A. history, while avoiding a mere retread of their stories ... The Mirage Factory is an enjoyable read, especially in its evocation of early, urban Los Angeles. My only complaint after finishing the book was: more, please. The narrative breezes along at times a little too swiftly, and I found myself wanting more details on some of the tantalizing facts dropped, like so many tasty bread crumbs, by its author.

...The Mirage Factory reflects a Trumpian nostalgia that has infected even our sanctuary city. In the 21st century, as L.A. becomes a whiter place (because of declining immigration and high housing prices), its still mostly white elites — especially its media, intelligentsia and environmentalists — have developed a real fetish for the smaller and whiter L.A. of the early 20th century, which they portray as a more livable place. In so doing, they have made the history Krist covers far too important. The truth is that today’s Los Angeles was built not by Mulholland or Griffith in the 1920s but by a far more diverse array of characters in the 1980s and 1990s. Chief among them was Tom Bradley, an African American UCLA grad and cop who, despite dramatic mistakes and personal flaws, made Los Angeles a truly international city during 20 years as mayor. That Bradley has never been the subject of a major biography by a writer of Krist’s caliber is the real crime against nature ... Of course, it reeks of hypocrisy for any Angeleno, including me, to complain about endless sequels. And Krist’s book is so good that, like the best movies, it ends up inverting the genre. In his telling, people around the world came to L.A. because they desperately needed a great city with perfect weather, space to make bigger pictures and unmoored souls who were open to seeing God in new ways ... By the end, a world without Los Angeles seems unimaginable.

The fact that the sprawling megalopolis even exists today is something of a small miracle, partly made possible by the early visionaries that championed the city’s dreams. As the author notes, rightly, 'it was no sensible place to build a great city,' offering 'few of the inducements to settlement and growth found near major cities in other places.' Darting between a macro and micro viewpoint, the author maintains his sharp focus on three primary subjects. William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith, Aimee Semple McPherson ... Although the author unearths little that is historically groundbreaking, his dramatic portrayals of politics, scandals, sabotage, and bombings make for a rich, rewarding read ... An entertaining tale of triumph, hubris, and Manifest Destiny in the city of angels.

Krist reveals how a rural backwater was transformed into a verdant multicultural metropolis through ingenuity, chicanery, and hyperbole in this engrossing history of Los Angeles. Focusing on the years 1900 through 1930, Krist draws from historic documents and firsthand accounts to show how the use of new technology in film production and mass media seduced hopeful dreamers westward with inspirational words and promises of unlimited opportunity ... With a gift for evocative phrasing ('The images they conjured up... all had elements of the swindle about them, like mirages whose heady promises could evaporate on closer inspection'), Krist serves up intricate stories, rich period atmosphere, and colorful personalities to capture the zeitgeist of this eventful period. The result is a rollicking jaunt through L.A.’s early days. (May)