Whole Earth Library presents
Sustainably Speaking, author series
Presenter: Author Philip J. Dreyfus on
Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco
Thursday, April 29, 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Pacific Room at TidesJoin us for a conversation with Professor Philip J. Dreyfus of San Francisco State University as he tells us stories of the making of San Francisco. How did San Francisco become a world-class metropolis? How did San Franciscans labor to remake their landscape to fit their needs? Dr. Dreyfus will focus on the ideas about nature during the early 20th century that destroyed our wetlands and forests, yet created the Golden Gate and Yosemite parks, the Sierra Club, and the modern environmental movement.
Philip J. Dreyfus is Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University. He has received numerous awards for his classroom teaching, and his writings have appeared in various academic journals.
Wednesday, July 22
12:30 to 1:30
In the library
Come join your friends and co-workers and share your thoughts about Mud, Blood, and Gold: San Francisco in 1849 by local historian Rand Richards. In 1849, the population of the small port town of San Francisco exploded as tens of thousands of people from around the world poured through it on their way to get rich in the recently discovered gold fields of California. Some succeeded, many failed. From eyewitness accounts of that tumultuous year, Richards creates a vivid picture of daily life filled with drinking, gambling, prostitution, violence, real estate speculation, and government corruption. Strained to the breaking point, the city was transformed in ways that echo to today.Please let us know at library@thoreau.org if you are interested in attending and/or if you need help finding a copy.(And yes, since we are doing this at lunch time, you will be allowed to eat in the library - just be careful around the couch)From the publisher:San Francisco in 1849 was a time and place like no other in American history. As word of the discovery of gold in California spread, people from all over the world descended on San Francisco--ground zero for the avalanche of humanity and goods pouring into the fabled El Dorado. There have been many books on the Gold Rush, but Mud, Blood, and Gold is the first to focus solely on San Francisco as it was at the peak of the gold frenzy. With a 'you are there' immediacy author Rand Richards vividly brings to life what San Francisco was like during the landmark year of 1849. Based on eyewitness accounts and previously overlooked official records, Richards chronicles the explosive growth of a wide-open town rife with violence, gambling, and prostitution, all of it fueled by unbridled greed.
The Library of Congress' American Memory Today in History site celebrated the anniversary of Congressman George Perkins Marsh's address in 1847 to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, which expressed a number of ideas central to the growing American conservation movement. He would later also write the influential book, Man and Nature. We don't have a copy, but you can download it from the nearby Internet Archive. If you haven't discovered it already, the Library of Congress has a fantastic presentation of historical resources related to the evolution of the conservation movement at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html where you can learn about Marsh, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and much more.
