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Cool Gray City Of Love: 49 Views Of San Francisco (2013)

by Gary Kamiya(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1608199606 (ISBN13: 9781608199600)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Bloomsbury USA

review 1: 49 chapters, one for every square mile in the city (though they aren't organized that way), more or less built around the experience of walking around the city. I found it a very enjoyable history of the city, especially since it wasn't told chronologically. But tying everything to actual locations made it all very absorbing, and easy to take at small gulps, though I did read about half of it in one evening. I'd call it a San Francisco classic, and the bibliography is great too.
review 2: The first problem I had with this book was that its title/sub combination caused me to keep referring to it as "50 Shades of Gray" (...). The second problem was the writing, which suffers from a bad case of unnecessary analogies: Kamiya will spend several paragraphs transporti... moreng you into the Pleistocene and then abruptly snap you out of it by comparing something to a Midwestern bowling ally on a Saturday night. It's kind of annoying. And for my taste the attempts at one neat little conclusion per chapter are in places strained. Sometimes an interesting building is just an interesting building and not a metaphor for man's inhumanity to man. Like, it's OK -- I would have still read the chapter.However: Well researched, genuine, and genuinely interesting, full of fun stories. The blend of natural and human history is enjoyable, and Kamiya's skill as curator of miscellany more than makes up for the writing. less

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