The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest hearted, most pleasure loving city of the western continent, and in many ways the most romantic, is a horde of refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; but those who have known that peculiar city by the Golden Gate, have caught its flavor of the Arabian Nights, feel that it can never be the same. -from The City That Was A hundred years ago, San Francisco was devastated by earthquake and fire, and immediately after, reporter Will Irwin of the New York Sun, and formerly of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote an elegy for that shattered city that is suddenly heartbreaking anew, as the United States as a nation comes to terms again with the loss of another fabled metropolis. Reprinted from the Sun, where it appeared on April 21, 1906, this unabashedly loving and tender essay celebrates the food, the fashion, the weather, the nightlife of the foggy city by the bay. But most poignantly, Irwin laments for the people for whom "hospitality was nearly a vice" and to whom the city itself "a gateway to adventure." In the wake of the destruction of New Orleans, this century-old essay is tragically fresh. American journalist WILL IRWIN (1873-1948) is also the author of The House of Mystery: An Episode in the Career of Rosalie Le Grange, Clairvoyant (1910).

In the late nineteenth century, San Francisco's merchant princes built grand stores for a booming city, each with its own niche. For the eager clientele, a trip downtown meant dressing up--hats, gloves and stockings required--and going to Blum's for Coffee Crunch cake or Townsend's for creamed spinach. The I. Magnin empire catered to a selective upper-class clientele, while middle-class shoppers loved the Emporium department store with its Bargain Basement and Santa for the kids. Gump's defined good taste, the City of Paris satisfied desires for anything French and edgy, youth-oriented Joseph Magnin ensnared the younger shoppers with the latest trends. Join author Anne Evers Hitz as she looks back at the colorful personalities that created six major stores and defined shopping in San Francisco.

Carmel-by-the-Sea, The Early Years (1903-1913) describes the establishment of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, along with an overview of the history of the Carmel Mission and the Monterey Peninsula. The books emphasis is on the development of Carmel as a Bohemian artists and writers colony at the start of the 20th century. The towns first decade of existence is described: the businesses and services offered, and the residential architecture. There are biographies of the well-known Bohemian artists, writers, poets, builders, and other notable residents and visitors in the early 1900s. This original group of settlers, the majority of whom came from Northern Californias Bay Area, were distinctive individuals, who were drawn to the coastal village by its scenic beauty and the inspiration it provided for their intellectual pursuits. They set the tone that made Carmel-by-the-Sea a Bohemian enclave on the West Coast, and distinguished it as a unique place. These early residents and visitors left a significant and lasting impact on the future of the seaside town, which in turn attracted other creative talents to the area, through the years and still to this day. Carmel-by-the-Sea, The Early Years (1903-1913), preserves the literary, artistic, cultural, and architectural heritage of Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula region.