Dreamers and Schemers – How an Improbable Bid for the 1932 Olympics Transformed Los Angeles from Dusty Outpost to Global Metropolis

"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