Unreal Estate leads Liz Smith‘s column today for the Chicago Tribune and wowowow. It’s “a sprawling, delicious chronicle of how L.A. evolved real estate-wise, how the land became valuable, how the great neighborhoods were designed,” Smith writes, “….compelling and overflowing with gossip. Gross doesn’t just give us sites and architecture. He tells of the innumerable scandals that each house spawned: the epic divorces, murders, suicides, bankruptcies, sexual excess, family plotting, betrayals and crooked land and water deals. It’s fun! And quite astonishing to read….Unreal Estate is compulsively readable.”