Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Barry Siegel will be at several Southern California literary events in promotion of his new book, Dreamers and Schemers: How an Improbable Bid for the 1932 Olympics Transformed Los Angeles from Dusty Outpost to Global Metropolis, which brilliantly chronicles how William May Garland and the 1932 Olympic Games fueled Los Angeles’s rise during the Great Depression. Providing an unusually revealing window onto a particular time, place, and way of life, Siegel shows how one man’s grit and imagination made California history.

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

Upcoming Events:

  • Saturday, November 9 — 3 PM: Author reading and signing at Tecolote Bookshop in Montecito, CA
  • Thursday, November 14 — 7 PM: Author talk at {pages} a bookstore in Manhattan Beach, CA
  • Thursday, November 21 — 7:30 PM: Book launch event at The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA

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

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