It's not unusual for a guy from L.A. to dream about becoming a big Hollywood honcho with employees who jump when you bark, a blond trophy wife, a driver, a showplace house, and TV deals all over town. Now, what if you achieve all that -- plus a globetrotting, risk-taking lifestyle – after you were a penniless quadriplegic not expected to see 30. That was Gordon Zahler.   With chutzpah and cunning, he lifted himself and his mother off welfare in the early-1950s by selling canned music to anyone willing to buy it. What began with Ed Wood Jr’s infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space and a Doris Day/MGM romantic comedy ended 20 years later with Gordon deep in network television, foreign films and dreams of super-wealth.   In Wheeler-Dealer, Zahler’s nephew, Chip Jacobs, puts his career on hold as a zealous investigative reporter to chronicle the uncle he once despised. When Gordon broke his neck in a horrifying school-gym accident in October 1941, it hit like a bomb. The accident rendered the 14-year-old daredevil permanently paralyzed, obliterated his parent’s marriage, and reduced his family to a life on handouts. Nobody expected the boy would make it out of intensive care, let alone head one of Hollywood’s busiest independent post-production studios.   Played out against the backdrop of Ed Wood Jr.'s B-movie showbiz and later 1960s network TV, Wheeler-Dealer introduces readers to a barrelful of action-loving personalities, from Western stars to the creator of Gentle Ben, who orbit the little mogul in a wheelchair. Part biography, part memoir, Jacobs unearths family secrets he battled his own mother to disclose: double murders concealed for 50 years, fortunes won and lost, and the betrayal of Gordon's mother (the author’s grandmother), discarded when her immobile son wooed a bride. By the end, Jacobs comes to understand the collateral costs of disability, while recognizing the triumph of Gordon's self-absorbed, but ultimately dazzling, appetite for life. It's a story too improbable to fabricate.

Wheeler-dealer: The Rip-roaring Adventures of My Uncle Gordon, a Quadriplegic in Hollywood

Biographies & Memoirs

Jacobs, Chip

Arts & Literature

First Person Pr

Bumbling hitmen. Burning corpses. Life in hiding. A threatened son. Jerry Schneiderman's orderly world evaporated when his business partner was executed by an assassin in 1979 Los Angeles, and the buzzard-eyed ringleader soon came for him. Though the killers behind this murder-for-hire corporation were nabbed, the trauma annihilated Jerry's family and stripped his trust. Recovery only came years later with Jerry's improbable rebirth as a prank-loving activist who defended the weak and made enemies with the rich and powerful.

The Ascension of Jerry: Business Lies, Hitmen and the Making of an L.A. Muckraker

Leaders & Notable People

Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book

Investigative reporter Chip Jacobs goes deep into some of his most compelling journalism pieces of the last three decades with his signature spotlight on strange corruption, seedy individuals, megalomaniacs, bright ideas, and transgressive game-changers. Featuring in-depth and expanded stories previously published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and others, The Vicodin Thieves is an instant classic of crime, politics, and socio-analysis. Winner, anthology/collections, Southern California Book Festival

The Vicodin Thieves: Biopsying L.A.'s Grifters, Gloryhounds, and Goliaths

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles

The smog beast wafted into downtown Los Angeles on July 26, 1943. Nobody knew what it was. Secretaries rubbed their eyes. Traffic cops seemed to disappear in the mysterious haze. Were Japanese saboteurs responsible? A reckless factory? The truth was much worse--it came from within, from Southern California's burgeoning car-addicted, suburban lifestyle. Smogtown is the story of pollution, progress, and how an optimistic people confronted the epic struggle against airborne poisons barraging their hometowns. With wit, verve, and a fresh look at history, California based journalists Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly highlight the bold personalities involved, the corporate- tainted science, the terrifying health costs, the attempts at cleanup, and how the smog battle helped mold the modern-day culture of Los Angeles. There are scofflaws aplenty and dirty deals, plus murders, suicides, spiritual despair, and an ever-present paranoia about mass disaster. Brimming with historic photographs, forgotten anecdotes, and new revelations about our environmentally precarious present, Smogtown is a journalistic classic for the modern age.

History

Kelly, WilliamJ

Americas

Abrams Press

Now in paperback for the first time, revised with critical updates about global climate change The smog beast wafted into downtown Los Angeles on July 26, 1943. Nobody knew what it was. Secretaries rubbed their eyes. Traffic cops seemed to disappear in the mysterious haze. Were Japanese saboteurs responsible? A reckless factory? The truth was much worse--it came from within, from Southern California's burgeoning car-addicted, suburban lifestyle. Smogtown is the story of pollution, progress, and how an optimistic people confronted the epic struggle against airborne poisons barraging their hometowns. With wit, verve, and a fresh look at history, California based journalists Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly highlight the bold personalities involved, the corporate- tainted science, the terrifying health costs, the attempts at cleanup, and how the smog battle helped mold the modern-day culture of Los Angeles. There are scofflaws aplenty and dirty deals, plus murders, suicides, spiritual despair, and an ever-present paranoia about mass disaster. Brimming with historic photographs, forgotten anecdotes, and new revelations about our environmentally precarious present, Smogtown is a journalistic classic for the modern age. Now with a updated introduction.

Harry N. Abrams

Arroyo: A Novel

Set against two distinct epochs in the history of Pasadena, California, Arroyo tells the parallel stories of a young inventor and his clairvoyant dog in 1913 and 1993. In both lives, they are drawn to the landmark Colorado Street Bridge, or "Suicide Bridge," as the locals call it, which suffered a lethal collapse during construction but still opened to fanfare in the early twentieth century automobile age. When the refurbished structure commemorates its 80th birthday, one of the planet's best known small towns is virtually unrecognizable from its romanticized, and somewhat invented, past. Wrought with warmth and wit, Jacobs' debut novel digs into Pasadena's most mysterious structure and the city itself. In their exploits around what was then America's highest, longest roadway, Nick Chance and his impish mutt interact with some of the big personalities from the Progressive Age, including Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Charles Fletcher Lummis, and Lilly and Adolphus Busch, whose gardens were once tabbed the "eighth wonder of the world." They cavort and often sow chaos at Cawston Ostrich Farm, the Mount Lowe Railway, the Hotel Green and even the Doo Dah Parade. But it's the secrets and turmoil around the concrete arches over the Arroyo Seco, and what it means for Nick's destiny, that propels this story of fable versus fact. While unearthing the truth about the Colorado Street Bridge, in all its eye-catching grandeur and unavoidable darkness, the characters of Arroyo paint a vivid picture of how the home of the Rose Bowl got its dramatic start.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Rare Bird Books

A Los Angeles Times bestseller\nA CrimeReads 2019 most anticipated/best book\nSet against two distinct epochs in the history of Pasadena, California, Arroyo tells the parallel stories of a young inventor and his clairvoyant dog in 1913 and 1993. In both lives, they are drawn to the landmark Colorado Street Bridge, or "Suicide Bridge," as the locals call it, which suffered a lethal collapse during construction but still opened to fanfare in the early twentieth century automobile age. When the refurbished structure commemorates its 80th birthday, one of the planet's best known small towns is virtually unrecognizable from its romanticized, and somewhat invented, past.\nWrought with warmth and wit, Jacobs' debut novel digs into Pasadena's most mysterious structure and the city itself. In their exploits around what was then America's highest, longest roadway, Nick Chance and his impish mutt interact with some of the big personalities from the Progressive Age, including Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Charles Fletcher Lummis, and Lilly and Adolphus Busch, whose gardens were once tabbed the "eighth wonder of the world." They cavort and often sow chaos at Cawston Ostrich Farm, the Mount Lowe Railway, the Hotel Green and even the Doo Dah Parade. But it's the secrets and turmoil around the concrete arches over the Arroyo Seco, and what it means for Nick's destiny, that propels this story of fable versus fact.\nWhile unearthing the truth about the Colorado Street Bridge, in all its eye-catching grandeur and unavoidable darkness, the characters of Arroyo paint a vivid picture of how the home of the Rose Bowl got its dramatic start.

Literary

<div>Late-seventies Los Angeles was rampant with killers and shady characters, but all the go-getters at Space Matters saw was possibility. Richard Kasparov was handsome and charismatic; his younger associate, Jerry Schneiderman, brilliant and nerdy. When the pair hired a veteran contractor to oversee construction, the space planning firm they operated out of a hip mansion in LA's Miracle Mile district appeared poised to transform the boundless skyline into their jackpot. After the promising team imploded, however, the orderly lines on their blueprints succumbed to treachery and secrets. To get even, one of the ex-partners launched a murder-for-profit corporation using, among other peculiar sorts, a bantam-sized epileptic with a deadeye shot and a cross-dressing sidekick. The hapless criminals required a comical number of attempts to execute their first target. Once they did, on a rainy night in the San Fernando Valley, the surviving founder of Space Matterswas thrown into a pressure cooker existence out of a Coen Brothers movie. Threatened for money he didn't have, he donned a disguise, survived a heart-pounding encounter at the La Brea Tar Pits, and relied on an ex-Israeli mercenary for protection. In the end, he had to outfox a glowering murderer, while asking if you can ever really know anyone in a town where dirty deals send men to their graves. InThe Darkest Glare, Chip Jacobs recounts a spectacular, noir-ish, true-crime saga from one of the deadliest eras in American history. You'll never gaze out windows into the dark again. Included as a bonus is an original true crime short from the same unhinged era. In "Paul & Chuck," a flashy, crusading attorney wages war against the messianic leader of a bloodthirsty cult determined to teach the world to stay away. </div>

The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles

William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative look at China's ecological calamity, which makes Los Angeles' air pollution crisis of yesteryear seem like an easy-breathing dream. Toxic smog most figured was obsolete needlessly kills as many people there daily as the 9/11 attacks, while huge plumes of Asian contaminants ride the jet stream to rain down ozone and mercury on the American West Coast. In vivid prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China's ancient love affair with coal, and how the Clinton Administration's push to bring China into the World Trade Organization accelerated the outsourcing of millions of factory jobs in another sucker punch to the U.S. middle class. They explore officials' manipulation of Beijing's eco-statistics, the horror of China's "e-waste" and "Cancer" villages, the deception of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and spellbinding peasant revolts against disease-spreading plants that state censors often muffle. Ending with a profile of China's gargantuan coal-bases, which climatologists decry as a global warming dagger, The People's Republic of Chemicals names names and emphasizes humanity over bloodless propaganda.

The People's Republic of Chemicals

Science & Math

Kelly, William J.

Earth Sciences

The life of Gordon Zahler was simply so miraculous that it might as well have been science fiction. Born into an entertainment family in suburban Los Angeles in the mid-1920s, Zahler was a lovable prankster and class clown, exasperating his parents with his endless teenage feats of derring-do. But Gordon Zahler's promising career as a public miscreant went pear-shaped one day in 1940 when he and his buddies where fooling around in their high school gym with a spring board. An unsteady jump no the board vaulted Gordon on a deadly trajectory landing him squarely on his neck, severing his spine. He was 14-years old. That's when the miracles began. Strange As It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler, the journey of a former nobody who defied the odds and biases racked upagainst him to frolic in Hollywood, is vividly retold by his nephew, writer Chip Jacobs. More than just a biography, Jacobs' portrait evokes an early, Day of the Locust Hollywood where art and fortunes were made by a colorful set of foreigners, weirdos, obsessives, and freaks. During the 1950s and 1960s, Gordon became a kingpin in this milieu, as his music/sound effects post-production house scored films for low budget sci-fi films, genre movies like Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, Popeye and Bozo the Clown cartoons, as well as hundreds of other projects. Gordon, best known for his clever soundtrack on Ed Wood Jr.'s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space, was always a better story than the scripts he accentuated. Eventually wealthy, with a house off the Sunset Strip, a devoted blond trophy wife and raucous, star-filled parties, Gordon - 95-pound dynamo - built an existence from scratch that mere able-bodied mortals could only dream about. How many of them could say Lucille Ball adored them, or they were partners with Walter Lantz, Woody Woodpecker's cartoonist and producer, or Ivan Tors, the brains behind Flipper, Gentle Ben and the nature-drama field still red-hot today? Bored confining himself to one area, Gordon tried developing futuristic concepts, from audible books to talking gas-station pumps. He kept a powerboat for boozy excursions, traveled from Beirut toThailand, was thrown out of moving cars, nearly died after being blessed by the pope and had a Forest Gumpian-knack for being in dangerous places at the wrong time. As a boy, Jacobs was not overly fond of a voluble relation with a spidery physique and witchy arms. As an adult hungry to understand his family's past, Jacobs' trepidation gave way to awe and curiosity. Strange As It Seems is the culmination of one man's quest to live a life that was almost denied him, and another's to bring that untold legend out of history's shadows.

Strange As It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jacobs, Chip. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Jacobs, Chip

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jacobs, Chip. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Wheeler-dealer: The Rip-roaring Adventures of My Uncle Gordon, a Quadriplegic in Hollywood

The Ascension of Jerry: Business Lies, Hitmen and the Making of an L.A. Muckraker

The Vicodin Thieves: Biopsying L.A.'s Grifters, Gloryhounds, and Goliaths

Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles

Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles

Arroyo: A Novel

Arroyo: A Novel

The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles

The People's Republic of Chemicals

Strange As It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler