The grand homes that rose out of the boom of the 1920s are at the heart of the opulent book The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills, out Sept. 2 from Rizzoli. Author Jeff Hyland, the late cofounder of luxury real estate firm Hilton & Hyland, spent years researching the book and created a personal library of Beverly Hills historical items. “Beverly Hills had a certain cachet from the very beginning because it was associated with Hollywood,” Lori Hyland tells Los Angeles. Titans of industry headed to the hills of Beverly and hired some of L.A.’s greatest architects to fashion extravagant pleasure palaces. Beverly Hills is very competitive.