Dreams and Schemes: My Decade of Fun in the Sun - Softcover

For nearly 10 years as a columnist with the Los Angeles Times, STEVE LOPEZ HAS TRAVELED SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SIFTING FOR GOLD. When asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Lopez responds, “I wake up and roll out of bed and bump into column ideas everywhere.” Ideas come from readers, from the news, from driving down the road or walking down the sidewalk, from getting a haircut or going to a ballgame.The greater L.A. area is a place where $50 million mansions are just a short limo ride from cardboard box colonies. Action heroes and billionaires run for office with neither a plan nor a clue. You can get a fake driver’s license or a medical marijuana card faster than you can drive six blocks. There’s drama every day, a story in every block. Dreamers and schemers are found around every corner. And Lopez puts a spin on it all that makes the reader cringe, laugh, and even think.Dreams and Schemes: My Decade of Fun in the Sun is a collection of Lopez's most controversial, irreverent, trouble-making, and heart-warming columns. He writes through the eyes of the region and its people, unflinchingly taking on the movers and shakers, and poking about in places where other reporters wouldn’t dare go. This collection offers an entertaining and insightful look into the workings of modern-day life that will delight not only people who know the players and locations well, but will resonate with people anywhere because people, politics, and situations that catch Lopez’s eye are universal.

STEVE LOPEZ is an award-winning columnist for the Los Angeles Times. His book The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, a New York Times bestseller, won a Pen USA Literary Award and was the basis for the 2009 DreamWorks film starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. Prior to joining the staff of the Los Angeles Times, Lopez spent four years at Time Inc. (1997-2001), where he wrote for Time, Sports Illustrated, Life and Entertainment Weekly. Prior to Time Inc., Lopez was a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1985-1997), the San Jose Mercury News (1983-1985) and the Oakland Tribune (1977-1983). Lopez’s other books include Land of Giants: Where No Good Need Goes Unpunished (1995), a collection of the best of his Inquirer columns, and several novels. Lopez is married and has two sons and a daughter