Customer Reviews

Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

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OK, OK, I get the point: elites manipulate the physical world for their own enrichment and then disguise their machinations by comprimising the media. So what else is new?

One complaint that has already been voiced about this book is that it is not reall "about" San Francisco at all, but rather makes a point about all cities. That complaint is true in that author's theoretical underpinings for his argument extend to examples outside of San Francisco. Really though, what else would the author do?

Personally, I found authors attempt to relate San Francisco to Rome and other cities to be interesting and relevant.

Another complaint voiced in these reviews is authors tone. That tone has been described as "shrill". I would have to concur with that complaint. I found the tone of this book to be distracting. I would venture to guess that anyone, ANYONE who reads this book is likely amenable to his "Cities suck" thesis. To belabor the point in the manner that author does is just beating a dead horse.

In defense of author, he doesn't present himself as a true "academic" but as a sort of journalist/academic cross-trainer. I found that perspective refreshing. Author is impassioned about the subject of book in a way that makes you put up with the occasional hectoring and shrillness.

One fundamental problem I had with the substance, rather then the style of the book: Author repeatedly discusses various civic improvement schemes as plots to "increase real estate values". Query: Is that really such a nefarious scheme? If you look at California today, property ownership is hardly the exclusive province of the elite. In this way, I think the book unwittingly lends supports to an alternative, and contradictory hypotheses: That the actions that economic elites take in their own self interest ultimately benefit those outside their own social class.

So, that's something to think about.

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 California at least two years before it was publicly announced. Once the stage was set and the time was right, Polk presented a huge nugget of gold to Congress and the Gold Rush was on. And what a myth the Gold Rush turned out to be! Most lost money. Indeed, as Brechin shows, each $1 of gold produced cost a total of about $5 to produce when land degradation, soil erosion, clean up and other costs are included.

Toward the end of the book, the author traces how Silicon Valley arose. What he doesn't get into, but others have, is how similar the dot.com bomb is to the Gold Rush. We are even now living in the shadow of the tech wreck, which while born in the Bay Area, affects the national and even the world economy.

All in all, a very interesting read. Highly recommended.

If you're looking for a book on the history of San Francisco, this is not it. For the first 65 pages or so (out of 330 before footnotes), San Francisco is barely mentioned. Instead, the author talks about Rome, Washington DC, the Mexican-American war, the Spanish-American war, UC Berkeley, the mining-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, and other related-but-not-directly-related items. There's a good chapter on San Francisco newspaper history and politics, and the UC Berkeley history is interesting but not directly relevant. The book's origin as a PhD thesis kind of shows. Unlike the book jacket, I did not find it to be "potboiler urban history" or "written in a lively, accessible style." It advances a new way of looking at urban development history - the history of a city's growth as it (negatively) impacts the surrounding environment. It's interesting for that, but not if you want a book focused on San Francisco 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.

This is a true history. It reveals the behind the scenes perspective of how this small town, big politics City began and grew. Now I know who and how all the streets got named! It is no wonder why progressive residents fight so hard for stablization. Imagine if you where you live had to constantly deal with a government like was in Rome. READ EVERY PAGE!!

Gary Brechin's book, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin published by University of California Press in 1999, is an enlightening insight into the men who built San Francisco, their motivations, and the costs associated with their efforts. The author derived the book from his dissertation entitled, "Imperial San Francisco: The Environmental Impact of Urban Elites upon the Pacific Basin." It is a geographical and or environmental history of the world famous city born of the California gold rush. Brechin contends in his thesis that mechanization, the science of metals, militarism and finance all support the mining industry, which was the crux of the city's existence, in what he refers to as the "Pyramid of Mining".(19) Brechin "illustrate[s] how the Pyramid of Mining functions in practice, using the example of one city driven by a small cadre of select families who sought imperial hegemony within the Pacific Basin."(19) Captains of this empire include William Sharon, Irving Scott, Michael de Young, Claus Spreckels, and William Randolph Hearst. The book concludes with a short history of the University of California, Berkeley, often the recipient of the elite's philanthropic benefits, and the its role in the nuclear arms race. It is through this ingenious history of San Francisco that Brechin weaves the tales of how the wealthiest individuals manipulated the public, denigrated the environment, and even squandered human life in the pursuit of their own interests.

Throughout the work, Brechin attempts to show how the Pyramid of Mining was used to manipulate the public to promote wealthy self-interests. In this assertion, one of the author's flaws becomes evident. Lack of documented notes discounts a convincing argument. An example occurs when the author writes that James Marshall merely "rediscovered" gold and that the United States knew of California's mineral wealth long before thereby hastening America's War with Mexico.(29) Few notes document this interesting contention, and the ones that do seem to be rumor based. It is more likely that the United States under the direction of expansionist James Polk entered the war for fear of losing California to a nation like Britain who had loaned Mexico large sums of money in the nation's infancy.

On the other hand, Brechin satisfactory shows how the elite controlled the media thereby manipulating the public in an effort to perpetuate their own agenda. The dedication of numerous pages to the city's newspapers provides for some of the most compelling reading of the book. In chapter four Brechin explains how de Youngs climbed into San Franciscan society by building their news empire on the Chronicle. When the Chronicle took on Claus Spreckels' inhumane, treatment of Hawaiian sugar workers, Spreckels retaliated by purchasing de Young's competition the San Francisco Call.(175-180) In addition, media giant and yellow journalism pioneer, William Randolph Hearst is said to have moved into the family business that his father started in 1887. Senator, George Hearst's purchase of the San Francisco Examiner was "a means of furthering his own political ambitions."(177)

The city's struggle for water in order to sustain a larger population is an example of denigrating the environment to forward urban growth. Like the Romans, Brechin contends the city leaders channeled water through the Spring Valley Water Company's aqueduct. An illustration entitled "The Spring Valley Arcanum" shows the creation of wealth at the expense of nature and people.(87) Yet, the most audacious effort came from persuading the federal government to allow the damning of the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite National Park.(108)

Not only did the environment suffer at the hands of the city but it was also victim to the expansion of the empire. As the Pyramid of Mining lurched forward, as Brechin notes, it called for the stripping of Lake Tahoe's forests for the pilings to support the Comstock Mines in Virginia City.(46) When placer mining produced too little of the valuable metals it was replaced with hydraulic mining which "gouged immense wounds into the Sierra foothills. . . ."(39) The exportation of mining techniques like these spread throughout the Pacific Rim and around the world.(54)

Throughout Brechin's San Franciscan history, not even human life could impede the progress of the wealthy and their empire. One example provided by Brechin was how William Sharon drove William Ralston to financial ruin and suicide. Then Sharon swindled Ralston's widow out of millions.(89) Another was the gun slinging antics of the de Young brothers and the Spreckels that left prominent men wounded and Michael de Young dead.(174-177)

When mining no longer drove the empire one of its supporting bases did; militarism. Brechin demonstrates how the Irving Scott's Union Iron Works became the city's leading industry in the late nineteenth century. The company built warships for the Great White Fleet and facilitated America's dream of Manifest Destiny often with questionable tactics.(128-141) Furthermore, like today's shady arms dealers Union Iron Works brokered deals with foreign militaristic states and their enemies as in the case of the Japanese and the Russians.(142-143) It is the author's assertion that this was done to expand San Francisco's imperial control over the Pacific Rim.

The most threatening affront to human life from the empire comes at the end of the book as the author discusses the nuclear arms race. Brechin explains how "San Francisco's Old Money" financed Ernest Lawrence and Julius Oppenheimer's work at Berkeley to create atomic bombs in order to thwart any potential threat to the empire.(312) In a post World War II world, this technology eventually led to the hydrogen bomb and the potential of worldwide annihilation.

In conclusion, Brechin satisfactory illustrates that the history of San Francisco was a story of greed through the exploitation of people and the environment. The greatest criticism lays in some of the loosely documented notes, which must have been the result of editing since Brechin's dissertation was well cited.(notes) One omission that perhaps deserves discussion was the impact of the Silicon Valley and its contribution to the empire. Despite these criticisms, Imperial San Francisco offers a story of the city underneath all its gilding. It is a pleasure to read and most of its value lay in its insightful social commentary.

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!

I'm a native San Franciscan, 3rd generation Californian, and UC alumnus. I picked up the book from a stack my wife brought home from the library -- and couldn't put it down. It may be the best non-fiction book I have read. I thought I knew my hometown and state pretty well, but I was surprised again and again by the revelations in _Imperial San Francisco_. Brechin's writing is clear and compelling; the book is thoroughly researched and footnoted. The footnotes are often fascinating in themselves. The approach is overtly political: Brechin has an ax to grind. But it's a worthy ax, and he grinds it to a fine point. If one ever had warm feelings toward the Crockers, Floods, Fleishackers, et.al., this book will dissolve them. The story of Hetch-Hetchy water is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, imperialism is still with us, and the Bay Area is still the West Coast Distributor. Buy the book, dammit.

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.