100 books like Pictures of a Gone City

By Richard A. Walker,

Here are 100 books that Pictures of a Gone City fans have personally recommended if you like Pictures of a Gone City. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

Noel Keough Author Of Sustainability Matters: Prospects for a Just Transition in Calgary, Canada’s Petro-City

From my list on myth demonstrating why sustainability matters.

Why am I passionate about this?

Injustice has always motivated my research and activism. I have always been fascinated by nature and by the complexity of cities. For 25 years I have pursued these passions through the lens of sustainability. In 1996, I co-founded the not-for-profit Sustainable Calgary Society. My extensive work and travel in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, have given me a healthy skepticism of the West’s dominant cultural myths of superiority and benevolence and a keen awareness of the injustice of the global economic order. My book selections shed light on these myths and suggest alternative stories of where we come from, who we are, and who we might become. 

Noel's book list on myth demonstrating why sustainability matters

Noel Keough Why did Noel love this book?

San Francisco the good, an icon of diversity, creativity, and prosperity, is how I imagined the city. This book weaves a compelling, alternative narrative. Brechin tells his story through the rising fortunes of founding fathers–politicians, engineers, and entrepreneursmany today memorialized in San Francisco’s public spaces and places. People like media tycoon William Randolph Hearst Jr. with all his narcissism, wealth, and political ambition (remind you of anyone?). The book unearths the city’s beginnings in the rapacious extraction of resources in frontier California. It illustrates (through art, newspaper cartoons, and headlines) the city as the spearhead of an emerging empire with all of its racist and white supremacist roots. The book chronicles the trauma inflicted on nature and nations that stood in the way of San Francisco’s ambition. It demands that we reflect on ‘the stuff’ our great cities are made of.

By Gray Brechin,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Imperial San Francisco as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 1999, this celebrated history of San Francisco traces the exploitation of both local and distant regions by prominent families - the Hearsts, de Youngs, Spreckelses, and others - who gained power through mining, ranching, water and energy, transportation, real estate, weapons, and the mass media. The story uncovered by Gray Brechin is one of greed and ambition on an epic scale. Brechin arrives at a new way of understanding urban history as he traces the connections between environment, economy, and technology and discovers links that led, ultimately, to the creation of the atomic bomb and the nuclear…


Book cover of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

Tore C. Olsson Author Of Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

From my list on the Wild West and turning the myths upside down.

Why am I passionate about this?

History and video games have defined much of my life, so it’s no surprise I’m writing about both. I was born in Sweden and first encountered the Wild West through the Lucky Luke comic books (huge in Europe!), and they instilled in me a fascination with American history. I emigrated to the U.S. with my family at age 8 and misspent most of my adolescence playing video games. In college, I returned to my childhood passion for studying the past and earned a BA, MA, and PhD in American history. Since 2013, I’ve been a professor at the University of Tennessee. Red Dead’s History is my second book.

Tore's book list on the Wild West and turning the myths upside down

Tore C. Olsson Why did Tore love this book?

We tend to remember the railroad tycoons of the late 1800s in one of two ways–good or bad.

In the first, we imagine the Vanderbilts, Stanfords, and Goulds as the brilliant architects of the modern economy, “The Men Who Built America”–to quote the History Channel show. In the second, we imagine them as unscrupulous robber barons, evil geniuses who created the unequal corporate America that we still live in today. But what if both explanations give the railroad men far too much credit and responsibility?

In Richard White’s scathing and often hilarious book, he showcases these larger-than-life figures as bumbling, corrupt, and often bringing ruin and bankruptcy to their shareholders. They weren’t the mighty octopus we remember, but “a group of fat men in an octopus suit,” whose “tentacles of steel were as likely to be slapping at each other.”

By Richard White,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Railroaded as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This original, deeply researched history shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.


Book cover of Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco

Chris Carlsson Author Of Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes and Radical Histories

From my list on how San Francisco turned out like it did.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve lived in San Francisco since I was 20 in 1978. I helped launch Processed World in 1981, Critical Mass in 1992, and Shaping San Francisco in 1998. I’ve been co-directing and co-curating the archive at foundsf.org since 2009, and have been fully immersed for years in gathering and presenting local history online, on bike and walking tours, during Public Talks, and most recently on Bay Cruises. I have published three books of my own and edited or co-edited seven additional volumes, much of which covers local history. The more I’ve learned the more I’ve realized how little I know!

Chris' book list on how San Francisco turned out like it did

Chris Carlsson Why did Chris love this book?

Philip Dreyfus has written a fantastic one-stop ecological history of San Francisco that properly puts the city’s evolution into the natural systems on which it was built. Too many histories overlook the basic questions of water, topography, and climate and how human activity, that is work, has altered those over time. Dreyfus starts with an eloquent description of pre-contact life on the windy, foggy, sand-dune-covered peninsula, and methodically takes us through the sequences of urbanization, including the struggle over green spaces and parklands, water provision, and ultimately the surrounding bay itself. Few cities have benefited as much as San Francisco from the activism of previous generations that in our case, saved the bay, blocked freeway construction, and halted nuclear power.

By Philip J. Dreyfus,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Our Better Nature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Few cities are so dramatically identified with their environment as San Francisco - the landscape of hills, the expansive bay, the engulfing fog, and even the deadly fault line shifting below. Yet most residents think of the city itself as separate from the natural environment on which it depends. In Our Better Nature, Philip J. Dreyfus recounts the history of San Francisco from Indian village to world-class metropolis, focusing on the interactions between the city and the land and on the generations of people who have transformed them both. Dreyfus examines the ways that San Franciscans remade the landscape to…


Book cover of Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco

Elizabeth Linhart Veneman Author Of Moon: Northern California

From my list on San Francisco’s idealism, power, grit, and beauty.

Why am I passionate about this?

My early memories of San Francisco in the late 1970s are anything but glamorous. We lived in a crummy apartment down the street from the People’s Temple, and my preschool, in the always gray Sunset, served carob, not chocolate. Despite decamping for the greener pastures and white sands of Carmel-By-The-Sea, I was forever hooked by the gritty magic of San Francisco. I eventually returned to the city’s foggy Richmond District, where now I ruminate on past adventures, plot new ones, and write about the place I love. I'm the author of Moon Napa Sonoma, Moon California, and Moon Northern California, and my work has appeared in 7x7, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Alaska Magazine

Elizabeth's book list on San Francisco’s idealism, power, grit, and beauty

Elizabeth Linhart Veneman Why did Elizabeth love this book?

Cool Gray City of Love is a portrait, in the most classical sense, of San Francisco, and Kamiya is the journeyman traveling the cityscape to capture his subject’s soul. Each chapter centers on a point on San Francisco’s vast landscape, which blossoms into a tiny universe of place and history at Kamiya’s hand. He begins at the Farallon Islands, then jumps to The Tenderloin, then to Alcatraz, followed by Glen Canyon. While the journey can seem as incongruous as Bullitt’s race through San Francisco, it is as equally compelling, entertaining, and stunning. You’ll find yourself pulled along, promising to put the book down at the end of each chapter but unable to, falling in love with the city as you go. 

By Gary Kamiya,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Cool Gray City of Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"A kaleidoscopic homage both personal and historical . . . Kamiya’s symphony of San Francisco is a grand pleasure." ―New York Times Book Review

The bestselling love letter to one of the world's great cities, San Francisco, by a life-long Bay Area resident and co-founder of Salon.

Cool, Gray City of Love brings together an exuberant combination of personal history, deeply researched history, in-depth reporting, and lyrical prose to create an unparalleled portrait of San Francisco. Each of its 49 chapters explores a specific site or intersection in the city, from the mighty Golden Gate Bridge to the raunchy Tenderloin…


Book cover of The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Steven Rogers Author Of A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Right Now to Help the Black Community

From my list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap.

Why am I passionate about this?

Steven Rogers is a retired professor from Harvard Business School (HBS) where he created a new course titled, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.” He has written more HBS case studies with Black protagonists than anyone in the world. He is an HBS and Williams College alum. He majored in Black history. He has taught at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and West Point U.S. Military Academy. He has published 3 books including Entrepreneurial Finance (4 editions), Successful Black Entrepreneurs, and A Letter to my White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Now to Help the Black Community.

Steven's book list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap

Steven Rogers Why did Steven love this book?

This is one of my all-time favorite books! It was given to me by my nephew Kareem, in 2018. I have read it cover to cover, twice. My handwritten notes are on over 50% of the pages. 

The research that Baradarian put into this book is unparalleled. The book is chockful of facts and data that I never knew about Black history. For example, her research uncovered the fact that the forty acres of land that were to go to the 4 million formerly enslaved Black people after the Civil War was to be sold, not given to Blacks at $1.25 per acre. 

This book is filled with an abundance of typically unknown data, as she admirably tells the history of Blacks in America, through the Black banking industry’s chronicles. 

In the spirit of full transparency, my love for this book preceded the 2019 interview that I did of Baradarian…

By Mehrsa Baradaran,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Color of Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work."
-Ta-Nehisi Coates

"A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family."
-The Atlantic

"Extraordinary...Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that's often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create wealth in America."
-Ezra Klein

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than 1 percent of the total wealth in America. More than 150 years later, that number…


Book cover of The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them

Francis J. Teal Author Of The Poor and the Plutocrats

From my list on inequality and the disagreements over the cause.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have worked on the problems of poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, for much of my professional life. I worked at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, which is part of the Department of Economics at Oxford University, from 1991 until my retirement in 2012. I continue to work both with the Centre and the Department as a Managing Editor of Oxford Economic Papers and Chief Editor of the Journal of African Economies. My recent book The Poor and the Plutocrats grew out of this background where I wanted to understand the links between very poor countries and those of much richer ones.

Francis' book list on inequality and the disagreements over the cause

Francis J. Teal Why did Francis love this book?

The papers in this book follow on from an article in Vanity Fair, "Of the 1%, for the 1%, by the 1%". Mimicking Abraham Lincoln’s famous definition in his Gettysburg Address.

A central argument that runs throughout the book is that the growing inequality in the US is chosen, not by its peoples, but by its government. The implication is that the rising inequality and its causes are a threat to US democracy. The book sees a great divide opening between the mass of its citizens and a plutocratic class whose income, and relative position, continues to improve. The book documents how governments have pursued policies that only benefit the 1%.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Great Divide as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In The Great Divide, Joseph E. Stiglitz expands on the diagnosis he offered in his best-selling book The Price of Inequality and suggests ways to counter America's growing problem. With his signature blend of clarity and passion, Stiglitz argues that inequality is a choice-the cumulative result of unjust policies and misguided priorities.

Gathering his writings for popular outlets including Vanity Fair and the New York Times, Stiglitz exposes in full America's inequality: its dimensions, its causes, and its consequences for the nation and for the world. From Reagan-era to the Great Recession and its long aftermath, Stiglitz delves into the…


Book cover of Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

Bill Kuhn Author Of Facts & Fury: An Unapologetic Primer on How the GOP Has Destroyed American Democracy

From my list on to understand the American political system.

Why am I passionate about this?

I write about politics. I grew up in a political household. My mother was a key fundraiser for the Democratic Party and my stepfather served as a White House counsel to President Clinton. Politics and the Washington experience were the air I breathed during my formative years. I followed in their footsteps and co-founded Fight for a Better America, an organization that invests in key battleground districts and states throughout the US, with the goal of either flipping them blue or maintaining a Democratic incumbent. Through my travels with the organization, I have made hundreds of contacts with folks in local civic clubs and organized hundreds of volunteers on the ground. 

Bill's book list on to understand the American political system

Bill Kuhn Why did Bill love this book?

In his characteristically funny and sardonic style, Andersen guides us through the historical connection between corporate America and the Republican Party. Needless to say, the relationship has been strong and fruitful (Democrats are guilty as well, but it’s hardly a comparison). He reports on the key conservative figures in both the private and public spheres who have funded and enabled the transformation of our laws and society. It is a remarkable story of power and greed written in concise witty prose. Highly recommend!

By Kurt Andersen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Evil Geniuses as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When did America give up on fairness? The author of Fantasyland tells the epic history of how America decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get richer, and nothing should ever change—and charts a way back to the future.
 
“Essential, absorbing . . . a graceful, authoritative guide . . . a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change.”—The New York Times Book Review

During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and…


Book cover of Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola: A History of Dispossession, Slavery, and Inequality

Ana Lucia Araujo Author Of The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism

From my list on the material culture of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a historian of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade who was trained with a PhD in History and a PhD in Art History, and who's interested in how slavery is memorialized in the public space as well as in the visual and material culture of slavery. I was born and raised in Brazil, the country where the largest number of enslaved Africans were introduced in the era of the Atlantic slave trade and that still today is the country with the largest Black population after Nigeria, the most populous African country. I believe that studying the history of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery helps us to remedy the legacies of anti-Black racism today.

Ana's book list on the material culture of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism

Ana Lucia Araujo Why did Ana love this book?

Mariana Candido’s book brings to light the importance of land ownership among West Central Africans, by contesting the work of historians who up to here have basically agreed with the claims of European conquerors and colonizers who stated that West Central African land was plentiful and empty, therefore available to be occupied by the newcomers.

Drawing on detailed archival research, the book also us how West Central African men and women acquired and owned land and movable property. Candido brings to light how West Central African communities were consumers of European and Asian goods, and therefore connected to other parts of the world.

The book shows how men and women in Angola accumulated wealth, and also how during the rise of colonialism they were deprived of this wealth.  

By Mariana P. Candido,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Exploring the multifaceted history of dispossession, consumption, and inequality in West Central Africa, Mariana P. Candido presents a bold revisionist history of Angola from the sixteenth century until the Berlin Conference of 1884-5. Synthesising disparate strands of scholarship, including the histories of slavery, land tenure, and gender in West Central Africa, Candido makes a significant contribution to ongoing historical debates. She demonstrates how ideas about dominion and land rights eventually came to inform the appropriation and enslavement of free people and their labour. By centring the experiences of West Central Africans, and especially African women, this book challenges dominant historical…


Book cover of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

Liah Greenfeld Author Of The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth

From my list on the relationship between capitalism and nationalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth is the second volume of my nationalism trilogy. When I published the first volume, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, the accepted view on the subject of nationalism was that it is a product of economic development, specifically, of industrialization and capitalism. On the basis of historical evidence, I proved that its emergence had nothing to do with these economic phenomena: in fact, it preceded both. Reviews of Nationalism, noting that, for this reason, economic developments could not have caused nationalism, raised the question what relationship, then, did exist between nationalism and the economy, and this led me to investigate it. 

Liah's book list on the relationship between capitalism and nationalism

Liah Greenfeld Why did Liah love this book?

This book is a rare attempt by an eminent economic historian to examine cultural determinants of economic growth and answer the question why it happens, which distinguishes it sharply from the discipline’s exclusive focus on how it proceeds.

Landes, in other words, disentangles the explanation of causes from the preoccupation with the process, which is why I recommend this book.

By David S. Landes,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Wealth and Poverty of Nations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now that the old division of the world into the two power blocs of East and West has subsided, the great gap in wealth and health that separates North and South remains the single greatest problem and danger facing the world of the Third Millennium. The only challenge of comparable scope and difficulty is the threat of the environmental deterioration, and the two are intimately connected, indeed are one. David Landes argues that the North-South division is the great drama of our times, and that drama implies tension, passion, conflict and disappointment as well as happy outcomes. While Landes does…


Book cover of Capital: The Eruption of Delhi

John Rennie Short Author Of The Unequal City

From my list on cities and their power to change lives and attitudes.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a small village in a very rural part of Scotland. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that I would have an interest in the urban. Cities, especially big cities, seemed wonderfully exciting when I was growing up, full of mystery and promise, intoxicating, transgressive, with a hint of danger and a whiff of excitement. That fascination has stayed with me throughout my academic career as I have explored different facets of the urban experience. I am aware of the growing inequality but remain optimistic about the progressive possibilities and redemptive power of the urban experience to change lives and attitudes.

John's book list on cities and their power to change lives and attitudes

John Rennie Short Why did John love this book?

It reads like a great novel but is a great work of non-fiction. The subject is India’s capital as it undergoes massive change and growing polarization. The book gets under the surface of change to reveal some of its costs and consequences. The book is a great blend of reportage, political critique, and sympathetic accounts of the varied citizenry, from the very wealthy to the very poor. A fascinating and empathetic account of rapid change in one of the city's largest cities in one of the world's most populous countries as it both fashions and is impacted by globalization. 

By Rana Dasgupta,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Capital as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**Winner of the 2017 Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage**

**Short-listed for the Orwell Prize and for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize**

An extraordinary portrait of the fastest-growing city in the world-and the rise of a new global elite

Since the opening up of India's economy in 1991, wealth has poured into the country, and especially into Delhi. Capital bears witness to the astonishing metamorphosis of India's capital city, charting its emergence from a rural backwater to the center of India's new elites. No other place on earth better embodies the breakneck, radically disruptive nature of the global…


Book cover of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin
Book cover of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
Book cover of Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco

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