"A riveting account of the collapse of the St. Francis dam in 1928. . . . Standiford makes a convincing argument that [the aqueduct] deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with other engineering marvels of the same era, such as the Panama Canal." - Wall Street Journal
"In this incredibly timely book, Les Standiford chronicles William Mulholland's heroic drive to bring water to Los Angeles and thus to create the city we know today. It's a powerful-and beautifully told-story of hubris, ingenuity, and, ultimately, deepest tragedy." - Erik Larson
"Water for the Angels is not simply a masterful and riveting story about the political chicanery and engineering miracles that combined to bring life-giving water to Los Angeles County, but it's a triumphant tale of a simple, blue-collar man, William Mulholland, who with hard-headed practicality and relentless focus and a natural genius for understatement overcame impossible odds to accomplish an impossible task that almost single-handedly gave birth to a great American city." - James W. Hall, author of Hit Lit and The Big Finish
"The portrait that emerges is of a determined public servant who was in the right place at the right time, demonized by later generations for his role in removing water from other parts of California in order to shape a metropolis. The added value of Standiford's book largely comes in its closing pages, in which he examines the now-canonical script for Chinatown and separates fact from fiction." - Kirkus Reviews
"A mark of excellence in biography is that the reader comes away with more than the story of one person's life, but the life of an entire place. Los Angeles now has its panoramic story told through the shady and glorious journey of the one-time ditch-digger William Mulholland. If you want to learn why L.A. looks and feels like it does, read Les Standiford's magnificent account in which myths are debunked, pseudo-heroes are exposed and hydraulic engineering is made more exciting than any war. Forget Chinatown. This is the straight story." - Tom Zoellner, author of Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World

Publisher: Ecco Press

Pub date: 2016-02-23

Length: 336 pages