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A Los Angeles Times bestseller A CrimeReads 2019 most
anticipated/best book Set against two distinct epochs in the
history of Pasadena, California, Arroyo tells the parallel stories
of a young inventor and his clairvoyant dog in 1913 and 1993. In
both lives, they are drawn to the landmark Colorado Street Bridge,
or "Suicide Bridge," as the locals call it, which suffered a lethal
collapse during construction but still opened to fanfare in the
early twentieth century automobile age. When the refurbished
structure commemorates its 80th birthday, one of the planet's best
known small towns is virtually unrecognizable from its
romanticized, and somewhat invented, past. Wrought with warmth and
wit, Jacobs' debut novel digs into Pasadena's most mysterious
structure and the city itself. In their exploits around what was
then America's highest, longest roadway, Nick Chance and his impish
mutt interact with some of the big personalities from the
Progressive Age, including Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Charles
Fletcher Lummis, and Lilly and Adolphus Busch, whose gardens were
once tabbed the "eighth wonder of the world." They cavort and often
sow chaos at Cawston Ostrich Farm, the Mount Lowe Railway, the
Hotel Green and even the Doo Dah Parade. But it's the secrets and
turmoil around the concrete arches over the Arroyo Seco, and what
it means for Nick's destiny, that propels this story of fable
versus fact. While unearthing the truth about the Colorado Street
Bridge, in all its eye-catching grandeur and unavoidable darkness,
the characters of Arroyo paint a vivid picture of how the home of
the Rose Bowl got its dramatic start.
Late-seventies Los Angeles was rampant with killers and shady
characters, but all the go-getters at Space Matters saw was
possibility. Richard Kasparov was handsome and charismatic; his
younger associate, Jerry Schneiderman, brilliant and nerdy. When
the pair hired a veteran contractor to oversee construction, the
space planning firm they operated out of a hip mansion in LA's
Miracle Mile district appeared poised to transform the boundless
skyline into their jackpot. After the promising team imploded,
however, the orderly lines on their blueprints succumbed to
treachery and secrets. To get even, one of the ex-partners launched
a murder-for-profit corporation using, among other peculiar sorts,
a bantam-sized epileptic with a deadeye shot and a cross-dressing
sidekick. The hapless criminals required a comical number of
attempts to execute their first target. Once they did, on a rainy
night in the San Fernando Valley, the surviving founder of Space
Matters was thrown into a pressure cooker existence out of a Coen
Brothers movie. Threatened for money he didn't have, he donned a
disguise, survived a heart-pounding encounter at the La Brea Tar
Pits, and relied on an ex-Israeli mercenary for protection. In the
end, he had to outfox a glowering murderer, while asking if you can
ever really know anyone in a town where dirty deals send men to
their graves. In The Darkest Glare, Chip Jacobs recounts a
spectacular, noir-ish, true-crime saga from one of the deadliest
eras in American history. You'll never gaze out windows into the
dark again. Included as a bonus is an original true crime short
from the same unhinged era. In "Paul & Chuck," a flashy,
crusading attorney wages war against the messianic leader of a
bloodthirsty cult determined to teach the world to stay away.
Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs
follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination
of China's ecological calamity already imperiling a warming planet.
Toxic smog most people figured was obsolete needlessly kills as
many as died in the 9/11 attacks every day, while sometimes Grand
Canyon-sized drifts of industrial particles aloft on the winds rain
down ozone and waterway-poisoning mercury in America. In vivid,
gonzo prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive
research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China's
ancient love affair with coal, Bill Clinton's blunders cutting
free-trade deals enabling the U.S. to "export" manufacturing
emissions to Asia in a shift that pilloried the West's middle
class, Communist Party manipulation of eco-statistics, the horror
of cancer villages, the deception of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and
spellbinding peasant revolts against cancer-spreading plants
involving thousands in mostly-censored melees. Ending with China's
monumental coal-bases decried by climatologists as a global warming
dagger, The People's Republic of Chemicals names names and
emphasizes humanity over bloodless statistics in a classic sure to
ruffle feathers as an indictment of money as the real green that
not even Al Gore can deny.
Paralyzed from the neck down, Gordon Zahler rose from his deathbed
to a fast-talking, Hollywood entrepreneur/idea man who traveled the
world, lived hard, married, fantasized about water-skiing and
chased his dreams to create one of the largest independent
postproduction shops in Hollywood. While this is Jacobs' story
about his coming to grips with his deformed uncle, himself and his
mother, the silent victim to Gordon's recklessness, Strange As It
Seems is also a tip of the hat to the man who turned his back on
the notion of I can't.
A Los Angeles Times bestseller A CrimeReads 2019 most
anticipated/best book Set against two distinct epochs in the
history of Pasadena, California, Arroyo tells the parallel stories
of a young inventor and his clairvoyant dog in 1913 and 1993. In
both lives, they are drawn to the landmark Colorado Street Bridge,
or "Suicide Bridge," as the locals call it, which suffered a lethal
collapse during construction but still opened to fanfare in the
early twentieth century automobile age. When the refurbished
structure commemorates its 80th birthday, one of the planet's best
known small towns is virtually unrecognizable from its
romanticized, and somewhat invented, past. Wrought with warmth and
wit, Jacobs' debut novel digs into Pasadena's most mysterious
structure and the city itself. In their exploits around what was
then America's highest, longest roadway, Nick Chance and his impish
mutt interact with some of the big personalities from the
Progressive Age, including Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Charles
Fletcher Lummis, and Lilly and Adolphus Busch, whose gardens were
once tabbed the "eighth wonder of the world." They cavort and often
sow chaos at Cawston Ostrich Farm, the Mount Lowe Railway, the
Hotel Green and even the Doo Dah Parade. But it's the secrets and
turmoil around the concrete arches over the Arroyo Seco, and what
it means for Nick's destiny, that propels this story of fable
versus fact. While unearthing the truth about the Colorado Street
Bridge, in all its eye-catching grandeur and unavoidable darkness,
the characters of Arroyo paint a vivid picture of how the home of
the Rose Bowl got its dramatic start.
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