A kaleidoscopic tribute to San Francisco by a life-long Bay Area resident and co-founder of Salon explores specific city sites including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Land's End sea cliffs while tying his visits to key historical events. By the author of Shadow Knights. 30,000 first printing.

The bestselling book from two prizewinning, critically acclaimed contemporary chroniclers of San Francisco-a rich, illustrated, idiosyncratic portrait of this great city. In Spirits of San Francisco, #1 bestselling Cool Gray City of Love author Gary Kamiya joins forces with celebrated, bestselling artist Paul Madonna to take a fresh look at this one-of-a-kind city. Marrying image and text in a way no book about this city has done before, Kamiya's illuminating narratives accompany Madonna's masterful pen-and-ink drawings, breathing life into San Francisco sites both iconic and obscure. Paul Madonna's atmospheric images will awe: his wide-angle drawings offer a new perspective on the “crookedest street in the world” and vistas across the city. And Kamiya's engaging prose, accompanying each image, offers striking vignettes of this incredible city: witness his story of “Dumpville,” the bizarre community that sprang up in the 19th century on top of a massive garbage dump. Handsome and irresistible-much like the city it chronicles-Spirits of San Francisco is both a visual feast and a detailed, personal, loving, informed portrait of a beloved city.

"[Nob Hill Gazette] contacted me and asked if I would write some articles for them on San Francisco history, and in August, 1998, "Bret Harte, and the Patronage of a Lady " was the first of those articles to appear in the Gazette pages. It is the first article in this work as well. Over the next fourteen years, the gazette has published fifty-five of my articles. With the editor's advice and guidance, there were historical pieces on authors, artists, merchants, philanthropists, neighborhoods, streets, and restaurants...stories in a periodical are usually ephemeral, so I have decided to select some of my favorite pieces and present them in a more permanent format with the addition of various graphics to enrich the prose" -- P. 5.