Eighteen self-guided walking tours down city streets that will take you back in time, with colorful stories about the buildings along the way and the people associated with them. Brimming with insight and the odd fact, laced with humor and drama, this unique guidebook sheds new light on the history of one of America's renowned cities. Easy-to-follow maps, and dozens of historic photographs.

In Sight and Sound magazine's 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time, Vertigo placed at the top of the list, supplanting Citizen Kane. A favorite among critics, it also made the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies where it ranked in the top 10. Often regarded as Hitchcock's most personal work, the film explores such themes as obsession, exploitation, and voyeurism. In The San Francisco of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo: Place, Pilgrimage, and Commemoration, Douglas A. Cunningham has assembled provocative essays that examine the uniquely integrated relationship that the 1958 film enjoys with the histories and cultural imaginations of California and, more specifically, the San Francisco Bay Area. Contributors to this collection ponder a number of topics such as the ways in which Vertigo resurrects the narratives of San Francisco's violent past; how sightseeing informs the act of watching the film; the significance that landmarks in the film hold in our collective cultural memory; and the variety of ways in which Vertigo enthusiasts commemorate the film. The essays also ask larger questions about the specificities of place and the role such specificities play in our comprehensive efforts to understand this layered and seminal film. Because of its interdisciplinary approach, The San Francisco of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo will have a broad appeal to scholars of film, anthropology, geography, ethnic studies, the history of California and the West, tourism, and, of course, anyone with an abiding interest in the work of Alfred Hitchcock.

This new edition of the ultimate guide to finding ghosts in the Bay Area highlights more than 100 haunted spots in and around San Francisco, all accessible to the public. Featured sights include the Queen Anne Hotel, one of the most haunted buildings in the area; the Atherton House; Cameron House in Chinatown; and of course, Alcatraz Prison. With advice on what to do with a ghost, what to do after the ghost hunt, and other telekinetic tidbits, this guide encourages travelers to be attentive and imaginative, willing them to take that extra spirit-sighting step.

A major urban history of the design and development of postwar San Francisco Designing San Francisco is the untold story of the formative postwar decades when U.S. cities took their modern shape amid clashing visions of the future. In this pathbreaking and richly illustrated book, Alison Isenberg shifts the focus from architects and city planners—those most often hailed in histories of urban development and design—to the unsung artists, activists, and others who played pivotal roles in rebuilding San Francisco between the 1940s and the 1970s. Previous accounts of midcentury urban renewal have focused on the opposing terms set down by Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs—put simply, development versus preservation—and have followed New York City models. Now Isenberg turns our attention west to colorful, pioneering, and contentious San Francisco, where unexpectedly fierce battles were waged over iconic private and public projects like Ghirardelli Square, Golden Gateway, and the Transamerica Pyramid. When large-scale redevelopment came to low-rise San Francisco in the 1950s, the resulting rivalries and conflicts sparked the proliferation of numerous allied arts fields and their professionals, including architectural model makers, real estate publicists, graphic designers, photographers, property managers, builders, sculptors, public-interest lawyers, alternative press writers, and preservationists. Isenberg explores how these centrally engaged arts professionals brought new ideas to city, regional, and national planning and shaped novel projects across urban, suburban, and rural borders. San Francisco’s rebuilding galvanized far-reaching critiques of the inequitable competition for scarce urban land, and propelled debates over responsible public land stewardship. Isenberg challenges many truisms of this renewal era—especially the presumed male domination of postwar urban design, showing how women collaborated in city building long before feminism’s impact in the 1970s. An evocative portrait of one of the world’s great cities, Designing San Francisco provides a new paradigm for understanding past and present struggles to define the urban future.