Don Benito Wilson: Mountain Man to Mayor fills a long-missing gap in the record of Southern California history. Published by Angel City Press, this biography documents the life of one of the most significant pioneers of Los Angeles.  The grandfather of Gen. George Patton, Wilson is almost unknown today except for the prominent local peak, Mount Wilson, which was named for him.  He is largely unknown today because, until now, no one has published his story.  This book corrects this oversight of history.

This book was written as a must-read for Southern California residents, telling the little-known story of the early life of Los Angeles and its environs.  Many Southern California natives know more about the history of early New York and Washington, D. C., than about their own city.  Most would be hard pressed to name a single Los Angeles pioneer.   While Don Benito Wilson: Mountain Man to Mayor certainly fills an academic gap, it was written primarily as a page-turner for the general reader, a book that fills a gap in the wider public’s curiosity about the early days of what is today the second largest city in the U.S.

Benjamin Davis Wilson, known as Don Benito in pre-American Southern California, shaped Los Angeles and California history in a remarkable number of ways.   He owned what is today Beverly Hills, UCLA, large parts of downtown Los Angeles, the City of Riverside, Culver City, Wilmington, Pasadena, Altadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, Alhambra and parts of other cities and was one of the wealthiest persons in early Los Angeles

Author Nat Read earned a history degree from Austin College and has written magazine and newspaper articles all of his adult life.   He spent three years researching Wilson’s life, reading every scrap in the collected papers of the subject and virtually every newspaper that Wilson would have read during his life in Southern California.  Read’s research took him to dozens of libraries, archives, museums and historical societies in California and as far away as Tennessee, the state of Wilson’s birth. A sellout crowd attended a debut event of the book signing that was held at Vromans Book store in Pasadena.

For information on availability of the book: Don Benito Wilson: Mountain Man to Mayor, visit: www.angelcitypress.com and fine bookstores everywhere.