Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles

The rise and fall of William Mulholland, and the story of L.A.’s disastrous dam collapse: “A dramatic saga of ambition, politics, money and betrayal” (Los Angeles Daily News).

Rivers in the Desert follows the remarkable career of William Mulholland, the visionary who engineered the rise of Los Angeles as the greatest American city west of the Mississippi. He sought to transform the sparse and barren desert into an inhabitable environment by designing the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemi...