West of Eden is the definitive story of Hollywood, told, in their own words, by the people on the inside: Lauren Bacall, Arthur Miller, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Ring Lardner, Joan Didion, Stephen Sondheim
- all interviewed by Jean Stein, who grew up in the Forties in a fairytale mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny (There Will Be Blood) & traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, & the movie studios
- from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp. & Rupert Murdoch (who bought the Stein mansion in 1985). West of Eden is about money, power, fame & terrible secrets: the doomed Hollywood of the late Fifties, early Sixties
- `the rotten heart of paradise`. Like her last book, the best-selling Edie, this is an oral history told through brilliantly edited interviews. As this is Hollywood, it`s a book full of sex, drugs & celebrity glamour; but because it`s built from the firsthand accounts of people who were actually there, many of them writers, actors & artists, it`s also strangely claustrophobic, seductive, & completely compelling.