Let's Read Los Angeles: Inventing Paradise

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.

The accompanying photo from the library's Security Pacific National Bank Collection illustrates just such a paradise—the climate is great, but the palm trees are fake.