Unreal Estate went on sale today and the web was alive with comment on it. On Whom You Know, blogger Peachy Deegan calls the book “a truly original history of a place that is not known for being historical….pearls up to here with the most scandalous gossip paired with the most ambitious American dreams of California. Oooh we just loved it….an exquisite social history.” There’s also an interview with me there. Los Angeles Magazine posted its monthly required reading list, and included Unreal Estate, for the “sexy and sordid stories [that] fill this survey of L.A.’s wealthiest, most private districts.” And David Ng of Culture Monster, the Los Angeles Times culture blog, reports that two estate-owners who figure large in the book–the serial entrepreneurs and noted philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick (at right)– have sent an email to all their friends condemning my portrait of them as “lies and gross exaggerations” and calling Unreal Estate a work of fiction. I have to compliment them on “gross exaggerations”–so clever! I’m trying to get a copy of the email to see what else they said, and won’t comment further until then. But I suspect this will turn out to be one of the best reviews the book gets.