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by Richard Hansen (Author), Terry Hamburg (Author)
"San Francisco is forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality." -Paul Kantner, founder of San Francisco rock band Jefferson Airplane.
Surging from hamlet to boomtown overnight, San Francisco is the most meteoric "instant city" in history. Over the decades, residents have offered unique perspectives through journals, letters, and newspapers, their words bringing another time to life. Discover San Francisco through the eyes of miners and "ladies of the night." Relive the experiences of robber barons and beatniks who flourished in this tiny corner of the world with fewer than one million souls. From the Gold Rush to the Tech Rush, the city by the bay been the site of daring innovations, counterculture upheavals, and social rebellions that shaped generations.
With commentary, background and extraordinary images, historians Terry Hamburg and Richard Hansen guide you through these colorful quotes, showing San Francisco as it once was, and what it aspired to be.
Author Biography
Terry Hamburg was trained as a historian, completing graduate studies at the University of Michigan and Cambridge University. After a brief foray as a hippie and political activist, he became an antiques dealer in San Francisco. Terry finally found his calling as the director of the Heritage Foundation at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, a place rich in California history and art. He oversees and conducts tours and lectures, plans special events and writes a newsletter and blog articles. For more than fifty years, Richard Hansen has been researching and documenting San Francisco and California history. In collaboration with his mother, onetime city archivist Gladys Hansen, they became world-renowned experts on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, fire and epidemic--especially on those who died during the disasters. Today, he remains active in many San Francisco historical organizations and is the founder and driving force behind the virtual museum (www.sfmuseum.org).
