The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906

The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906
Author: Philip L. Fradkin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520230606

"In this well-researched book, Fradkin contends that it was the people of San Francisco, not the forces of nature, who were responsible for the extent of the destruction and death."--"Booklist."

The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Of 1906

The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Of 1906
Author: Louise Chipley Slavicek
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2009
Genre: Earthquakes
ISBN: 1438118163

Examines the devastating earthquake that struck San Francisco in 1906 and the resulting fires that destroyed a large section of the city.

A New Literary History of America

A New Literary History of America
Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 1129
Release: 2012-05-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674064100

America is a nation making itself up as it goes alongÑa story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, A New Literary History of America brings together the nationÕs many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what ÒMade in AmericaÓ means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoricÑcultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape. The meeting of minds is extraordinary as T. J. Clark writes on Jackson Pollock, Paul Muldoon on Carl Sandburg, Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams, Sarah Vowell on Grant WoodÕs American Gothic, Walter Mosley on hard-boiled detective fiction, Jonathan Lethem on Thomas Edison, Gerald Early on Tarzan, Bharati Mukherjee on The Scarlet Letter, Gish Jen on Catcher in the Rye, and Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry Finn. From Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop to Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, from Alexander Graham Bell and Stephen Foster to Alcoholics Anonymous, Life, Chuck Berry, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ronald Reagan, this is America singing, celebrating itself, and becoming something altogether different, plural, singular, new. Please visit www.newliteraryhistory.com for more information.

American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Author: Robert Yeates
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800080980

Visions of the American city in post-apocalyptic ruin permeate literary and popular fiction, across print, visual, audio and digital media. American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction explores the prevalence of these representations in American culture, drawing from a wide range of primary and critical works from the early-twentieth century to today. Beginning with science fiction in literary magazines, before taking in radio dramas, film, video games and expansive transmedia franchises, Robert Yeates argues that post-apocalyptic representations of the American city are uniquely suited for explorations of contemporary urban issues. Examining how the post-apocalyptic American city has been repeatedly adapted and repurposed to new and developing media over the last century, this book reveals that the content and form of such texts work together to create vivid and immersive fictional spaces in ways that would otherwise not be possible. Chapters present media-specific analyses of these texts, situating them within their historical contexts and the broader history of representations of urban ruins in American fiction. Original in its scope and cross-media approach, American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction both illuminates little-studied texts and provides provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead, placing them within the larger historical context of imaginings of the American city in ruins.

Vera

Vera
Author: Carol Edgarian
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2022-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501157531

"Meet Vera Johnson, fifteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Rose, notorious proprietor of San Francisco's most legendary bordello. Vera has grown up straddling two worlds-the madam's alluring sphere, replete with tickets to the opera, surly henchmen, and scant morality, and the quiet domestic life of the family paid to raise her. On the morning of the great quake, Vera's worlds collide. As the city burns and looters vie with the injured, orphaned, and starving, Vera and her guileless sister, Pie, are cast adrift. Disregarding societal norms and prejudices, Vera begins to imagine a new kind of life. She collaborates with Tan, her former rival, and forges an unlikely family of survivors, navigating through the disaster together. In Vera, Carol Edgarian creates a cinematic, deeply entertaining world, in which honor and fates are tested; notions of sex, class, and justice are turned upside down; and love is hard-won. A ravishing, heartbreaking, and profound affirmation of youth and tenacity, Vera's story brings to life legendary characters-tenor Enrico Caruso, indicted mayor Eugene Schmitz and boss Abe Ruef, tabloid celebrity Alma Spreckels. This richly imagined, timely tale of improbable outcomes and alliances takes hold from the first page, with remarkable scenes of devastation, renewal, and joy. Vera celebrates the audacious fortitude of its young heroine, who discovers an unexpected strength in unprecedented times"--

Prospects for the Study of American Literature (II)

Prospects for the Study of American Literature (II)
Author: Richard Kopley
Publisher:
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2009
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780404615987

What can there possibly be left to say about . . .? This common litany, resonant both in and outside of academia, reflects a growing sense that the number of subjects and authors appropriate for literary study is rapidly becoming exhausted. Take heart, admonishes Richard Kopley in this dynamic new anthology--for this is decidedly not the case. While generations of literary study have unquestionably covered much ground in analyzing canonical writers, many aspects of even the most well-known authors--both their lives and their work-- remain underexamined. Among the authors discussed are T. S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry James, Willa Cather, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.

About to Die

About to Die
Author: Barbie Zelizer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2010-12-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199779988

Due to its ability to freeze a moment in time, the photo is a uniquely powerful device for ordering and understanding the world. But when an image depicts complex, ambiguous, or controversial events--terrorist attacks, wars, political assassinations--its ability to influence perception can prove deeply unsettling. Are we really seeing the world "as it is" or is the image a fabrication or projection? How do a photo's content and form shape a viewer's impressions? What do such images contribute to historical memory? About to Die focuses on one emotionally charged category of news photograph--depictions of individuals who are facing imminent death--as a prism for addressing such vital questions. Tracking events as wide-ranging as the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and 9/11, Barbie Zelizer demonstrates that modes of journalistic depiction and the power of the image are immense cultural forces that are still far from understood. Through a survey of a century of photojournalism, including close analysis of over sixty photos, About to Die provides a framework and vocabulary for understanding the news imagery that so profoundly shapes our view of the world.

The Book of Jack London

The Book of Jack London
Author: Charmian London
Publisher:
Total Pages: 482
Release: 1921
Genre: Authors, American
ISBN:

Several years after Jack London’s death, his wife Charmian released a 2-volume biography of his life. Volume I starts with the origins of his parents, John and Flora, and covers Jack’s childhood and early life growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. It also covers his oyster pirating, Klondike trips, and time spent riding the railroads. The book is full of his letters to Cloudesley Johns, Anna Strunsky, and others. The first volume ends with his voyage to Asia to cover the Japanese-Russian War. Volume II starts with his return from Korea after war-reporting and his divorce from his first wife. It covers their trip on the Snark and trips to New York and around Cape Horn. The 'bad year' when his house burns is described in detail, as is a return to Hawaii and the start of World War I. The volume ends with Jack's death in 1916.

A Paradise Built in Hell

A Paradise Built in Hell
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2010-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1101459018

The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

To the Last Smoke

To the Last Smoke
Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0816541477

From boreal Alaska to subtropical Florida, from the chaparral of California to the pitch pine of New Jersey, America boasts nearly a billion burnable acres. In nine previous volumes, Stephen J. Pyne has explored the fascinating variety of flame region by region. In To the Last Smoke: An Anthology, he selects a sampling of the best from each. To the Last Smoke offers a unique and sweeping view of the nation’s fire scene by distilling observations on Florida, California, the Northern Rockies, the Great Plains, the Southwest, the Interior West, the Northeast, Alaska, the oak woodlands, and the Pacific Northwest into a single, readable volume. The anthology functions as a color-commentary companion to the play-by-play narrative offered in Pyne’s Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America. The series is Pyne’s way of “keeping with it to the end,” encompassing the directive from his rookie season to stay with every fire “to the last smoke.”