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Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859
with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his
side. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los
Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today. In Frances
Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California
are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple
store owner only to become California's premier money-man of the
late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant,
Hellman quickly learned the use to which "capital" could be put,
founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first
successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the
West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry
Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds
that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and
assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los
Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles' first
synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the
University of Southern California and served as Regent of the
University of California. His influence, however, was not limited
to Los Angeles. He controlled the California wine industry for
almost twenty years and, after San Francisco's devastating 1906
earthquake and fire, calmed the financial markets there in order to
help that great city rise from the ashes. With all of these
accomplishments, Isaias Hellman almost single-handedly brought
California into modernity. Ripe with great historical events that
filled the early days of California such as the Gold Rush and the
San Francisco earthquake, Towers of Gold brings to life the
transformation of California from a frontier society whose economy
was driven by the barter of hides and exchange of gold dust into a
vibrant state with the strongest economy in the nation.
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