Dreamers and Schemers

Prolific Montecito author Barry Siegel, a professor at UC Irvine, has just published his eighth book Dreamers and Schemers, which chronicles how Los Angeles’s pursuit and staging of the 1932 Olympic Games during the depths of the Great Depression helped fuel the city’s transformation from a dusty cow town to a world-famous metropolis.

Barry, who won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and was a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, told guests at a bijou bash at Tecolote, the bustling bibliophile bastion in the upper village, realtor William May Garland was instrumental in the dramatic change.

“It shows how one man’s grit and imagination made California history.”