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Building Home is an innovative biography that weaves together three engrossing stories. It is one part corporate and industrial history, using the evolution of mortgage finance as a way to understand larger dynamics in the nation's political economy. It is another part urban history, since the extraordinary success of the savings and loan business in Los Angeles reflects much of the cultural and economic history of Southern California. Finally, it is a personal story, a biography of one of the nation's most successful entrepreneurs of the managed economy -Howard Fieldstad Ahmanson. Eric John Abrahamson deftly connects these three strands as he chronicles Ahmanson's rise against the background of the postwar housing boom and the growth of L.A. during the same period. As a sun-tanned yachtsman and a cigar-smoking financier, the Omaha-born Ahmanson was both unique and representative of many of the business leaders of his era. He did not control a vast infrastructure like a railroad or an electrical utility. Nor did he build his wealth by pulling the financial levers that made possible these great corporate endeavors. Instead, he made a fortune by enabling the middle-class American dream. With his great wealth, he contributed substantially to the expansion of the cultural institutions in L.A. As we struggle to understand the current mortgage-led financial crisis, Ahmanson's life offers powerful insights into an era when the widespread hope of homeownership was just beginning to take shape.

Mortgage loans --- Savings and loan associations --- American Dream --- Idealism, American --- Materialism --- Success --- Building and loan associations --- Building societies --- Cooperative building associations --- Depository institutions --- Loan associations --- Provident loan associations --- S and L's --- Thrift institutions --- Home loans --- Mortgage lending --- Real estate loans --- Loans --- Secondary mortgage market --- History --- Ahmanson, Howard F. --- E-books --- 20th century america. --- biographical. --- book club books. --- books for history lovers. --- building your own company. --- california history. --- chronicles ahmanson. --- discussion books. --- entrepreneurship. --- history of the american dream. --- history of western united states. --- history. --- how to manage a business. --- how to start a business. --- howard ahmanson. --- industrial history. --- leisure reads. --- managed economy. --- political economy. --- risk management. --- southern california. --- success in postwar america. --- successful entrepreneurs. --- urban history. --- vacation books.

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Philanthropists --- Charities --- History --- History --- Rockefeller Foundation.

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"This landmark volume is an authoritative, richly illustrated examination of the origins, evolution, and influence of the California ranch house. Carefree California looks at a legendary figure in Southern California design, Cliff May, and the ubiquitous domestic icon his name evokes, the ranch house. We also see how other architects--from George Washington Smith to Rudolph Schindler--pursued different paths toward the same kind of relaxed domesticity exemplified by the ranch house. By the late '50s, much of the world was fascinated with California living and with the ranch house in particular, which derived from architects' evocation and reworking of distinctive regional traditions, allied with the pervasive romance and myths of the California frontier, and from the cultivation of a domestic architecture that could serve distinctively Californian ways of carefree living. By uncovering patterns for living that suited the automobile age among the almost archaic forms and rhythms of mission and pioneer dwellings, an extraordinary range of modernism emerged that was at once grounded in history and soaring into the space age."--Publisher's website.

Architecture --- Architecture, Domestic --- Ranch houses --- History --- May, Cliff