The book opens with Davis visiting the ruins of the socialist community of Llano, organized in 1914 in what is now the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles.

Davis then explores intellectuals' competing ideas of Los Angeles, from the "sunshine" promoted by real estate boosters early in the 20th century, to the "debunkers," the muckraking journalists of the early century, to the "noir" writers of the 1930s and the exiles fleeing from fascism in Europe, and finally the "sorcerers," the scientists at Caltech.

The rest of the book explores how different groups wielded power in different ways: the downtown Protestant elite, led by the Chandler family of the Los Angeles Times; the new elite of the Jewish Westside; the surprisingly powerful homeowner groups; the Los Angeles Police Department.

The book concludes at what Davis calls the "junkyard of dreams," the former steel town of Fontana, east of LA, a victim of de-industrialization and decay.

He ranked it "one of the three most important treatments of that subject ever written, joining Four Ecologies and Carey McWilliams' 1946 book Southern California: An Island on the Land.