Where the Wild Ideas Are

Water engineer William Mulholland (above) stands in the Owens Valley in 1924 envisioning a 230-mile aqueduct. Walt Disney leans out the window of the Viewliner train at Disneyland in 1957. Amelia Earhart, with corsage and strappy heels, poses beside her biplane at the Los Angeles airfield in 1928. They and dozens more are showcased in Dreamers in Dream City (Angel City Press, $35). Harry Brant Chandler, '75, from the fifth generation of a Golden State dynasty, is a history-conscious photographer who likes to hand-color, retouch and digitally enhance historic photos and his own shots. His book rounds up Southern Californian innovators—some quick, most dead—who "succeeded in validating rather than repudiating our myth as the land of opportunity." In intensely hued portraits and short biographies, Chandler creates an eccentric book about eccentricity at the nation's edge.