Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

by Gray Brechin

Book Overview

First published in 1999, this celebrated history of San Francisco traces the exploitation of both local and distant regions by prominent families-the Hearsts, de Youngs, Spreckelses, and others-who... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520215680
• ISBN13: 9780520215689
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

POWERFUL, ENTERTAINING HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

I am long overdue in giving praise, and thanks, to Gray Brechin for writing one of the definitive and most unique historical treatises on the incomparable and often barbaric history of California, San Francisco, and the American West. He opens with an examination of urban-centric empires, particularly Rome and London, and shows how the process repeated and accelerated in California, due to the unprecedented economic boom triggered by Gold Rush, Silver Boom, the "green gold" agricultural explosion, real estate, ship building and military hardware. His portraits of the ruthless visionaries/profiteers like California's Big Four and Comstock Load barons gives a historical and cultural understanding of how the West became a major economic and political engine that helped transform America into the lumbering financial juggernaut it is today. Brechin dissects the phenomenon of faux wealth perfectly: explaining how hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Gold Mining stocks fueled the Western boom and expansion, investments that were several times greater than the actual amount of gold taken from the land. He dissects the financial "pyramid" that he attributes to mining: how elevator shafts that went down into the grown soon becamse elevator shafts that moved people up into the heavens in high rise buildings, transforming the brief gold mining bonanza into the real estate phenomenon that continues in California to this day. It a truly fresh, original, eye-opening and flawlessly documented observation. And Brechin is not shy about showing the human and environmental costs: the deforestation of the entire Lake Tahoe Basin, the astonishing wastelands created by high pressure water mining for silver in the High Sierra. This is mesmerizing, wonderfully written, a reflective and predictive tale, told as deftly and poignantly as any California history I have ever read, and I have read many. This book should take its place alongside Walter Bean's "Abe Ruef's San Francisco", Marc Reisner's "Dangerous California" and Gladys Hansen's "Denial of Disaster" as a pivotal tome on where we started and where we are headed in America and particularly the American West. James Dalessandro, author, 1906.

A Fascinating History of San Francisco

I was first drawn to this book because of its cover photo: the intersection of Market, Montgomery and Post Streets in the heart of the financial district in San Francisco sometime in the early 20th century. Today my office looks out at the very same intersection. A (very) current photo would show me waving from a window above the building on the cover's front left. That aside, I found this to be a very entertaining and enlightening history of the Bay Area. Using Lewis Mumford's concept of the Pyramid of Mining, Brechin structures his history along these main lines: the Gold Rush; San Francisco as the Golden Gate of US dominance of Asia; water, Hetch Hetchy and land values; newspapers and the shaping of public opinion; Mining and Munitions; and finally UC Berkeley, E.O. Lawrence and the mining of Uranium and Plutonium.Brechin's book is a serious, down to earth history. It is important for understanding not only the history of the west, but also the history of the US and Western Civilization's march from east to west to encircle the globe. The comments in the next few paragraphs are my conceptual riffs - my connecting the dots - the dots that Brechin provides. Brechin's work reminds me of David Ovason's book "The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital." Like Ovason, Brechin brings an art historian's eye to San Francisco's cityscape and public art - telling the history behind the art, what it means and what the underlying story really is. Whereas the first book deals with Washington, D.C. as the New Rome filled with Masonic symbolism expressed through astrological orbits, "Imperial San Francisco" deals with that city as an even later New Rome - a Constantinople -- dominated by the technology of Mining and Munitions expressed through atomic orbits. There is an axis that follows directly from Washington, DC through the Gold Rush of 1849 and on to the bright star in the east over Hiroshima in August 1945. It makes me wonder if the fireballs of August 6 and 9 in 1945 are somehow related to the sun's setting position in Washington around August 12th of every year. (see Ovason for more details).In 333 AD Roman Emperor Constantine the Great moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople. I was in Istanbul (Constantinople) in 1995 and was struck at how similar its topography is to San Francisco. I learned from Brechin's book that I was far from the first to note the similarities. For example, California pioneer John Fremont named the Golden Gate in reference to the Golden Horn of Constantinople - the water route by which the riches of the east flowed to the capital. Over the years many San Franciscan city boosters have hailed San Francisco as the New Rome and the New Constantinople. Brechin explores how both Rome and SF both built their pyramids of power on a basis of gold mining, and how water was channeled via long aqueduct systems to both. He explains and documents that the Polk administration knew of the existence of gold in Califo

More Than Just Good Local History

Brechin's acerbic and well-researched account of San Francisco's development and the attendant despoiliaton of its hinterlands will be amusing reading to anyone with a populist bent and an interest in San Francisco history.But "Imperial San Francisco" is far more than good local history. It's a book that wrestles with big ideas -- the poisonous and secretive power of economic elites, the cost of technology, and the way fortunes are built not by creating wealth but by shifting costs to others (including future generations).There are no easy answers here. This is not a book that inspires one with optimism about human nature or the human prospect. And by connecting San Francisco's rise to power with that of other imperial cities in the past (most notably Rome), Brechin makes a strong case that "t'was ever thus.""Imperial San Francisco" is also well-written (although this isn't popular history, but the real deal). And I feel compelled to add that in this day of specialization, careerism, and caution in historical writing it's a real pleasure to read such a wide-ranging and daring book. Brechin also makes excellent use of both photos and illustrations and comes up with quotes so juicy they made me want to head for the archives and read the primary sources myself.

Fantastic

I'm a SF Native and CAL alunmus as well and I have to say that this was one of the best non fiction books I've read in quite some time. I recall taking trips as a teenager to the Gold Country and remember falling for the myth of the individual forty niner. The knowledge that extracting gold and silver from the sierra was such a hugely capital intensive enterprise transforms your perspective so much. Mr. Brechin has piqued my interest in so many topics. I want to know more about the Union Iron Works and how the military industrial complex built so many bases in the Bay Area. I want to know more about what's behind the barbed wire in Strawberry Canyon. Write another book, or series of books!

History stripped of myth

Brechin's book goes a long way towards unveiling some of the core myths the perpetuate the wrong paths taken by our society.No other place on earth is more buried in sentimental - and highly inaccurate - nonsense than San Francisco. The beautiful city by the bay, the world's favorite tourist destination, the place everyone loves to visit has also served as the home base for one of the most industrious band of white collar thieves and cutthroats the world has ever known. Rarely, have so few people created so much devastation in such a short period of time.If this is news to you, then the mythologizers have done their job very well.The ecological devastation of California and other parts of the West and Pacific basin - the horrific destruction caused by reckless mining, the deforestation on a scale almost impossible to conceive, the ruination of millions of acres of fertile soil - a preponderance of these disasters were the outcomes of San Francisco-based enterprises.San Francisco's elite also played a crucial role in involving the US in destructive wars overseas starting with the Spanish-American war through to Vietnam and Central America. San Francisco's leadership in developing both the Bomb and the rationale for using against Japan is also covered in detail.The story isn't pleasant, but it's real and it's essential reading for anyone who is trying to make sense of the last 100 years. Many fascinating illustrations and very well written.