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West of Eden

An American Place

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An epic, mesmerizing oral history of Hollywood and Los Angeles from the author of the contemporary classic Edie
Jean Stein transformed the art of oral history in her groundbreaking book Edie: American Girl, an indelible portrait of Andy Warhol “superstar” Edie Sedgwick, which was edited with George Plimpton. Now, in West of Eden, she turns to Los Angeles, the city of her childhood. Stein vividly captures a mythic cast of characters: their ambitions and triumphs as well as their desolation and grief.
These stories illuminate the bold aspirations of five larger-than-life individuals and their families. West of Eden is a work of history both grand in scale and intimate in detail. At the center of each family is a dreamer who finds fortune and strife in Southern California: Edward Doheny, the Wisconsin-born oil tycoon whose corruption destroyed the reputation of a U.S. president and led to his own son’s violent death; Jack Warner, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, who together with his brothers founded one of the world’s most iconic film studios; Jane Garland, the troubled daughter of an aspiring actress who could never escape her mother’s schemes; Jennifer Jones, an actress from Oklahoma who won the Academy Award at twenty-five but struggled with despair amid her fame and glamour. Finally, Stein chronicles the ascent of her own father, Jules Stein, an eye doctor born in Indiana who transformed Hollywood with the creation of an unrivaled agency and studio.
In each chapter, Stein paints a portrait of an outsider who pins his or her hopes on the nascent power and promise of Los Angeles. Each individual’s unyielding intensity pushes loved ones, especially children, toward a perilous threshold. West of Eden depicts the city that has projected its own image of America onto the world, in all its idealism and paradox. As she did in Edie, Jean Stein weaves together the personal recollections of an array of individuals to create an astonishing tapestry of a place like no other.
Praise for West of Eden
“Compulsively readable, capturing not just a vibrant part of the history of Los Angeles—that uniquely ‘American Place’ Stein refers to in her subtitle—but also the real drama of this town . . . It’s like being at an insider’s cocktail party where the most delicious gossip about the rich and powerful is being dished by smart people, such as Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, Arthur Miller and Dennis Hopper. . . . Mesmerizing.”Los Angeles Times
“Perhaps the most surprising thing that emerges from this riveting book is a glimpse of what seems like deep truth. It’s possible that oral history as Stein practices it . . . is as close as we’re going to come to the real story of anything.”The New York Times Book Review
“Enthralling . . . brings some of [L.A.’s] biggest personalities to life . . . As she did for Edie Sedgwick in Edie: American Girl, [Stein] harnesses a gossipy chorus of voices.”Vogue
“Even if you’re a connoisseur of Hollywood tales, you’ve probably never heard these. . . . As ever, gaudy, debauched, merciless Hollywood has the power to enthrall its audience.”The Wall Street Journal
“The tales of jaw-dropping excess, cruelty, and betrayal are the stuff of movies, and the pleasures are immense.”Vanity Fair

“This riveting oral history chronicles the...
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 14, 2015
      This oral history delves behind the scenes of Tinseltown’s most illustrious bloodlines, providing rare insight into the lives of such Hollywood notables as the Warners, Dohenys, and Garlands. “I had the sense that my world was make-believe,” writes Stein (Edie: An American Girl), who grew up immersed in the company of Hollywood’s most elite families. She includes anecdotes about Arthur Miller, Warren Beatty, and Jane Fonda, as well as fascinating Hollywood stories about the crony-capitalist Teapot Dome scandal, affairs between starlets and studio executives’ wives during the 1950s, the vicious relationship Jack Warner developed with his son Jack Jr., how the Conference of Studio Unions strikes of 1945 led to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s Communist witch hunt, and Ronald Reagan’s transformation from liberal actor into conservative figurehead. Stein’s exhaustive research and brand-new interviews make this an invaluable resource for any student of pop culture, or indeed of 20th-century American history. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.

    • Kirkus

      December 15, 2015
      Through interviews with remnants of a long-gone Hollywood, a vivid sense of some of the great formative families emerges. Readers of George Plimpton's Paris Review will be familiar with the interview structure of this compelling, occasionally gossipy, informative chronicle of the flamboyant personalities from a storybook Hollywood era and the great houses they inhabited in Beverly Hills and Malibu. Stein (Edie: An American Biography, 1982, etc.), formerly an editor at Paris Review and Grand Street, delves into the strange, incredible sagas of early Los Angeles oil baron Edward L. Doheny; Warner Bros. founder Jack Warner; schizophrenic teenager Jane Garland (and her coterie of male handlers); actress and wife of David Selznick, Jennifer Jones; and the author's father, Jules Stein, founder of Music Corporation of America--all of whom were more or less neighbors and party acquaintances in the area. The speakers, aside from their names, are not otherwise identified; readers have to scan the "biographical notes" in the back, a structure aiming no doubt to maintain a fluidity to the narrative. Indeed readable, this work, through its gradual fleshing-out of the biographical portraits, depicts these larger-than-life legends who were vulnerable to scandal and heartbreak. Doheny, one of the richest men in the country in the 1910s, endured the suicide of his first wife and the death of his son following the Teapot Dome trial of 1929. Warner, remembered by his son Jack Jr. early on as a lovable man before success corrupted him, did not live to see his grand house on Angelo Drive bought by David Geffen in 1990. Actress Jones became the ultimate Hollywood hostess while weathering tremendous emotional instability. Jules Stein, the son of Lithuanian immigrants in South Bend, Indiana, left his career as an ophthalmologist to start a band-booking business and created an entire empire. Slips occasionally into hearsay and grievance but rivets readers with "a kind of fascinated horror."

      COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      October 1, 2015

      Grand Street editor Stein, author of the enduring Edie, tells the stories of five families and how they ambitiously shaped and reshaped Los Angeles in the 20th century. Among them is her own family; her father, Jules Stein, founded the Music Corporation of America (MCI) and moved it west from Chicago in 1939. Stein started interviewing Hollywood greats decades ago, when she was still in high school, and has continued to perfect the art of oral history through Edie and beyond; hundreds of interviews helped frame her newest book.

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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