Leo Braudy reviews Gary Krist’s The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles which tells the story of early-20th-century Los Angeles through three of its most prominent residents: William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith, and Aimee Semple McPherson.

Image: Hollywood, circa 1905, courtesy USC Libraries, California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960