Books About San Francisco

The Early Days (Through the 19th Century)

The books listed below are about San Francisco during her "early days," that is, through the 19th century. 

A Cast of Hawks. Gould, Milton S. La Jolla, CA: The Copley Press, Inc., 1985. 
“A rowdy tale of scandal and power politics in early San Francisco; the history of some daring and adventurous men and women who came to California in the Gold Rush.” (Google this book)

The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and The New American Dream. H. W. Brands, New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2002.
Brands explores the far-reaching implications of this pivotal point in U.S. history interweaving politics of the times, illuminating national issues and it’s effect on the way Americans view their destinies. (Google this book)

The Annals of San Francisco. Frank Soulè, John H. Gihon & James Nisbet, Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 1999.
Written by three journalists who were witnesses to and participants in the extraordinary events they describe. (Google this book)

The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. Herbert Asbury, New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1933.
Barbary Coast is Herbert Asbury’s classic chronicle of the birth of San Francisco—a violent explosion from which the infant city emerged full-grown and raging wild. (Google this book)

The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy. Righter, Robert W.  Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. 
The Battle over HH, America’s most controversial dam and the birth of modern environmentalism. Presented in the past as a fight between conservationists and big business, and follows the story from the completion of the dam in 1934 to the 1998 movement to restore Hetch Hetchy. (Google this book)

Big Alma - San Francisco's Alma Spreckels. Scharlach, Bernice. San Francisco, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1995. 
The story of the legendary artist model who married sugar baron Adolph Spreckels and gave San Francisco the Palace of the Legion of Honor. (Google this book)





Boss Ruef's San Francisco.  Bean, Walton Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1952.
The story of the union labor party, big business, and the graft prosecution of the late 1800s. (Google this book)

El Dorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire. Bayard Taylor, Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000.
The remarkable emergence of California through the eyes of Horace Greeley, dispatched by the New York Tribune in 1849. (Google this book)

The Far Western Frontier 1830-1860. Ray Allen Billington, New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1956.  The development of Texas, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and California – the differences in geography & climate, native races and early history. (Google this book)

Here is The Golden Gate: Its Romance, Its History and Its Derring-Do. Neill C. Wilson, New York: William Morrow & Company, 1962. This is not about the bridge but the discovery and naming of the Golden Gate - the ships that passed through and the land surrounding the “Gate”. (Google this book)

Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West 1846-1906. Barbara Berglund, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Focusing on the role of cultural frontiers in the urban west, Berglund offers a new take on western history that explores the role of market-driven cultural institutions, providing snapshots of the micro-workings of power on five key cultural frontiers. (Google this book)

New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. William H. Goetzmann, New York: NY, Penguin Books, 1986.  Shows how the explorations of Europeans facilitated the development of the American West and the work of American scientists, explorers, and artists-- spanning the 17th through 19th centuries in Europe and America. (Google this book)

The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900. Philip J. Ethington, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. University of The author interprets American politics from 1850 to 1900 on the assumption that social-group identities of race, class, ethnicity, and gender were politically constructed in the public sphere in the process of political mobilization and journalistic discourse. (Google this book)

 

Sam Brannan, Builder of San Francisco. Louis John Stellman, Fairfield, CA: James Stevenson Publisher, 1996. The colorful life story of the man who played a central role in the organizing of the historic “vigilance committees” which sought to restore order in crime-terrorized San Francisco. (Google this book)

Streets of San Francisco: The Origins of Street & Place Names.
Loewenstein, Louis K.  Birmingham, AL: Wilderness Press, 1996.
Get ideas of San Francisco’s past through stories behind many of our street sign names. (Google this book)

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Judy Yung, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. Documents the “unbinding” of Chinese women from the turn-of-the-century to the end of WWII . (Google this book)

The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience. J. S. Holliday, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1981. A classic eye-witness account, i.e. from gold-digger William Swain’s personal diary, of America’s westward expansion. (Google this book)

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