With more than 250 photographs and rare ephemera, all collected by author Tom Zimmerman, Paradise Promoted is the first book to showcase the era from 1870 to 1930 when boosters developed the small town of Los Angeles into the city that would become America’s most cutting-edge metropolis.

Los Angeles was the subject of the longest, loudest, most persistent promotional campaign in the history of the United States. Nothing was too exaggerated, absurd, or flat-out bizarre to be fodder for the relentless effort to convince Americans to slam the door forever on their home and sally forth to what booster supreme G.W. Burton called “The fairest daughter among the sisterhood of cities in the world.”

Zimmerman’s photos and ephemera show that even in the nineteenth century the same aspects that still draw millions of visitors and new residents to Southern California were the focus of all the promotional hullaballoo: the weather, the agriculture, the laid-back way of life, and of course the diversity of nature. The imagery used in Paradise Promoted will be the envy of ephemera collectors everywhere for its depth, for its variety and for its incredible story. This material that was meant to be cast away–ephemeral advertising and promotional pieces–tells the complete story of how the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the railroads, the speculators, business moguls and the Automobile Club wooed the world west. And that world has remained centered in the paradise they promoted.

Tom Zimmerman holds a masters degree in history and teaches at Marymount High School in Los Angeles. He is a native Southern Californian and extremely proud of that fact.