"Whereas, We, the citizens of San Francisco ... do most heartily approve of the project about to be inaugurated for the establishment of A Free Library in this City, and do pledge to the same our hearty and united support". With these words, an idea was born in San Francisco, an idea that eventually - well over a century later - achieved its apotheosis in the building of the New Main Public Library. This state-of-the-art cultural institution now stands as a tribute to all those who had the vision to conceive the idea and the energy to nourish this - through eras of triumph and tragedy. With masterful insight, Peter Booth Wiley narrates the fascinating story of this idea, tracing the concept of the library back to the origins of writing and human history itself, through the ages of antiquity to the first American libraries and beyond ... to San Francisco. Embroidered into the thread of the main narrative are 25 specially commissioned essays from the Bay Area's leading literary figures, accompanied by original artwork by noted local illustrators.

Charles Albert Murdock (1841-1928) left Massachusetts for California in 1855 with his mother, sister and brother. For many years he was editor of the Pacific Unitarian Magazine and one of the state's most distinguished printers. A backward glance at eighty (1921) begins with Murdock's memories of his trip west and reunion with his father, who had settled in Arcata on the Humboldt River. Murdock recalls life in the town and recounts stories of his father's early years on the Humboldt, the evolution of the region's Republican Party, acquaintance with Bret Harte, the printing business in San Francisco, 1867-1910, and the San Francisco Board of Education.

From the palace hotels of the elite to cheap lodging houses, residential hotels have been an element of American urban life for nearly two hundred years. Since 1870, however, they have been the target of an official war led by people whose concept of home does not include the hotel. Do these residences constitute an essential housing resource, or are they, as charged, a public nuisance? Living Downtown, the first comprehensive social and cultural history of life in American residential hotels, adds a much-needed historical perspective to this ongoing debate. Creatively combining evidence from biographies, buildings and urban neighborhoods, workplace records, and housing policies, Paul Groth provides a definitive analysis of life in four price-differentiated types of downtown residence. He demonstrates that these hotels have played a valuable socioeconomic role as home to both long-term residents and temporary laborers. Also, the convenience of hotels has made them the residence of choice for a surprising number of Americans, from hobo author Boxcar Bertha to Calvin Coolidge. Groth examines the social and cultural objections to hotel households and the increasing efforts to eliminate them, which have led to the seemingly irrational destruction of millions of such housing units since 1960. He argues convincingly that these efforts have been a leading contributor to urban homelessness. This highly original and timely work aims to expand the concept of the American home and to recast accepted notions about the relationships among urban life, architecture, and the public management of residential environments.

Among the many groups of Chinese who migrated from their ancestral homeland in the nineteenth century, none found a more favorable situation that those who came to Hawaii. Coming from South China, largely as laborers for sugar plantations and Chinese rice plantations but also as independent merchants and craftsmen, they arrived at a time when the tiny Polynesian kingdom was being drawn into an international economic, political, and cultural world. Sojourners and Settlers traces the waves of Chinese immigration, the plantation experience, and movement into urban occupations. Important for the migrants were their close ties with indigenous Hawaiians, hundreds establishing families with Hawaiian wives. Other migrants brought Chinese wives to the islands. Though many early Chinese families lived in the section of Honolulu called "Chinatown," this was never an exclusively Chinese place of residence, and under Hawaii's relatively open pattern of ethnic relations Chinese families rapidly became dispersed throughout Honolulu. Chinatown was, however, a nucleus for Chinese business, cultural, and organizational activities. More than two hundred organizations were formed by the migrants to provide mutual aid, to respond to discrimination under the monarchy and later under American laws, and to establish their status among other Chinese and Hawaii's multiethnic community. Professor Glick skillfully describes the organizational network in all its subtlety. He also examines the social apparatus of migrant existence: families, celebrations, newspapers, schools--in short, the way of life. Using a sociological framework, the author provides a fascinating account of the migrant settlers' transformation from villagers bound by ancestral clan and tradition into participants in a mobile, largely Westernized social order.