Among the Mansions of Eden: Tales of Love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills

by David Weddle

Book Overview

Among the Mansions of Eden is a fascinating and dishy exploration of Beverly Hills -- a rarefied community that has become a part of our country's mythos, a city renowned for its ostentatious displays... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060198176
• ISBN13: 9780060198176
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: William Morrow
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.1" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Best Book of it's Kind

I've read a lot of these "tell all" books and David Weddle's is by far the most impressive. He's a great story teller- expertly weaving the past with the present in a style that is both baudy and touching at the same time. I found myself rereading certain paragraphs that were so well crafted and yet completely serving to that particular anecdote. There is no wasted space in this book (read the first 30 pages and you probably know more than the average citizen whose spent their entire life there). This book wasn't written in a day- and it shows. Well done.

A Great Real Estate History of Beverly Hills

Originally born in California, I travel often to Los Angeles on business and pleasure and enjoy looking at Westside real estate and staying at the Peninsula Hotel. While this book limits it's history to Beverly Hills leaving out other interesting areas like Bel Air, it does a magnificent job of summarizing the history of 90210 as well as chronologically tracing the changes in the city.Some of the significant stories that I liked were the history of the original developer, the influx of what were considered lower status people, ie, actors, the history of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Arab influence in the 1970s and the changing retail environment of the Golden Triangle. This book also has some great pictures. My personal favorite was the BH Hotel with massive empty land all around. If you've been by in the last 30 years you know how weird empty land appears. This book also devotes a chapter to a Howard Hefner wannabe who started Perfect 10 magazine. Beverly Hills definitely attracts beautiful women, many of whom are looking for a way to live in the mansions. Also, there is a great chapter on the founder of Herbalife who came from nothing to own a great old mansion while planning to build a 40,000 sq. foot mansion. One year later, he's dead. If you want a history of Beverly Hills and what it is like to live there, this is the perfect book.

Among the Mansions of Eden

Mr. Weddle is our Virgil taking us on a tour of some of the poshest circles in the world. Lifting the curtain he allows us access to a world we can only dream about, to discover a nightmare world of bloated egos as well as bankbooks, that sadly proves ephemeral. Intriguing, eye-opening and fun!

Be Careful What You Ask For

As a twenty-year resident of Beverly Hills, I found Among the Mansions of Eden fascinating. It's the first book I've read that actually talks about what happens here. Throughout his investigation into the checkered history of Beverly Hills, Weddle's wry pen skewers a series of what seem to be over-the-top archetypes, but by the time he's finished, he's deftly revealed them as very human beings driven by understandable demons. I expect his penetrating look into the drug scene and quiet racism of this town to draw intense criticism, but his observations match my first-hand knowledge. And his observations concerning the corrosive effects of too much "success" resonated long after I put the book down.

Hilarious and Revealing

I found "Among the Mansions of Eden" to be a hilarious and riveting study of the rich who go to Beverly Hills to build their personal monuments. David Weddle lays bare the fallacy of materialism. He does this not by simply ridiculing the materialists--though god knows they ask for it--but by getting inside their heads and understanding their doomed aspirations. He sees that materialism is a romantic impulse, heartfelt and desperate. The wealthy erect their impossibly oversized palaces in the hope that they can build a perfect world and thus bring grace and contentment to their lives. By looking to the outside world and material achievement instead if within for fulfillment they of course end up failing, but do so spectacularly.This book is full of unforgettable characters: greedy real estate hustlers, aging movie stars, porno kings who aspire to emulate Hugh Hefner, Iranian refugees who arrived in Beverly Hills with millions of dollars stuffed in their pockets, high school druggies, body guards to the stars and snake oil salesmen who struck it big through infomercials. It is not just about the wealthy, but all of us who are endlessly fascinated by their outrageous exploits. It is about one version of the American Dream that Beverly Hills has come to represent--a twisted and corrosive dream but one that has a everlasting hold on the American imagination.