Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (California Studies in Critical Human Geography) [Paperback]

Brechin's book is part academic treatise, part shrill denouncement, and part insightful tell-all about America's favorite sweet-hart city. Basically, according to Brechin, a moneyed oligarchy destroyed the regional environment, poisoned our streams and wetlands, steered us towards a consumerist society dependant on fossil fuels and highways, provoked war, dumped toxic waste in workers' neighborhoods, and bought and control all significant media, all in order to make a buck. All the problems plaguing our modern society-poverty, crime, pollution, materialism-stem directly from the path of our greedy, imperial, and disgusting past.

Well researched (with occasional holes better filled by other reviewers), with plenty of gruesome anecdote and illustration, the book made my skin crawl, turned my belly aflame, and made me grit my teeth each morning as I read it on the Muni. All the passing sight from the train was just evidence of Man's greed and selfishness. What's worse, it only reminded me that the pace of our development only increases here in California.

But while Brechin was quite skillful in revealing the underbelly of San Francisco's past, his tone is grating and incessant. The book is like that obnoxious friend we all have who's politically savvy and unduly righteous. Reading the book is like being backed into a corner by this friend at a party and having to listen to all the products you should be boycotting.

And what was the alternative, after all? Certainly not the agricultural-philosophical town Brechin rhapsodizes about in the introduction. Jefferson extolled the same type of society, but his model needed slavery to uphold it, as did the Greeks', who Brechin praises as the ideal. So, after putting the book down, we're left with acrid taste in our mouths, yet no refreshing alternative with which to cleanse our palate.

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.

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.