A gift from my mother-in-law, it is one of my very favorite interior design books. I'm a San Franciscan and have this book on the mantel of my fireplace to enjoy anytime. My MIL in Indiana has a copy as well and loves it just as much as I do. These interiors are the perfect example of not following one design school of thought and decorating with what you love to create interesting rooms that reflect who you are and what you love. What I wouldn't give to live in some of these beautiful homes! This is a great gift for anyone who loves decorating, especially if they love SF. The photos are wonderful.

This is a book I enjoy looking at and reading again and again because it's like taking a personal tour through these stunning homes. Creative, magical, unique as the people who live there. Daring but with charm and lots of character. That's how I would describe these interiors. This is a fabulous book!

I own about 20 interior design books and this is by far the best . I love this wonderful book not only because the stunning pictures it presents but also this book accurately protraits the local styles and favorites. This book is very well organized. The more I read the more I regret the fact that I no longer live in there. If you love the city or have a real appreciation for interior design, buy it and you won't be disappointed by it. If you are just looking for a coffee table book, skip it. This book is too good to be just sitting on the table.

San Francisco Victorians is a wonderful little book, especially for the homesick like me. The book is full of great pictures reflecting the cultural heritage of Frisco, with a historian's essay telling the history along the way. Excellent companion for a long stroll in the city; for delightful discoveries.

I've seen this photographers' work before and he's done another impeccable job documenting some of the most originally restored homes I've seen in twenty years.

I love this book. The pictures are beautiful and the text is very informative. If you love artful buildings and wonderful pictures of them, you will be very glad to have this book.

Bring together an elegant top-quality publishing company, a gifted photographer, superb essayists and you have all the makings for a good book. Let the subject be San Francisco, though, and you have a great book.

This is the 3rd edition of this best seller with 218 full color images by Morton Beebe as well as essays by Herb Caen, Tom Cole, Barnaby Conrad, Herbert Gold, John Hart, Allen Pastron, Miguel Pendás, and Kevin Starr. Together, they provide an intimate portrayal of the City by the Bay. This stunning collection of photographs captures the contrasts, the energy, and the vitality of San Francisco. As do the essays.

Tom Cole takes us back to the beginning and provides an historical review of the raucous town that suddenly grew up overnight in its feverish bid for gold. Barnaby Conrad leads us into the night with anecdotes witty, clever, and sensuous from an eclectic mix including, to name just a few, Graham Green, Frank Sinatra, and Eva Gabor.

"Bahnaby tells me you haf a vooden leg, vitch vun iz it?"
"Eva, I never thought I'd have to tell a Gabor what a man's leg feels like."
"Vell, dahling, ve vass never in zee lumber business!"

In a final essay, Allen Pastron walks us through much of the city beneath our feet. Here, we discover the world's finest anchorage being dug up and, therein, its archaeological heritage. Penned a "worm's-eye-view," the essay provides some wonderful insights into what was once the bawdy Barbary Coast - particularly, the story of the discovery of the buried ship General Harrison.

Rudyard Kipling opined San Francisco was "a mad city inhabited by perfectly insane people." So it lives on! Multi-faceted lifestyles unfold with each page, the images capturing the curious joie de vivre that reigns over The City. Other pictures highlight the unmistakable landmarks: the skyline with its Pyramid Building, the Golden Gate, and my favorite, the Palace of Fine Arts in the gentle light of dusk below a full moon glowing. The photos speak volumes in this book. Each offers a glimpse as to why the city Herbert Gold called "America's last great metropolitan village" has won the most coveted travel destination award in the world - now ten years in a row - the Condé Nast Traveler's annual Readers' Choice Awards.

San Francisco, City by the Bay, was first published in 1985. This edition features ninety new images and three new essays. The publisher, Abrams, boasts that Beebe's book is their longest running best seller. Not surprisingly. It is said that San Francisco is a city full of people that want to be here. Morton Beebe, a 3rd generation San Franciscan, reminds us of why this is so.

Beebe's images have truly captured the many diverse flavors and charms that make San Francisco the unique city that it is. Combined with the entertaining and informative essays, the beatifully printed images in this book bring a reader as close as one can come to walking through the streets of San Francisco itself. I throughly enjoyed this book.

Absolutely gorgeous pictures, great for San Francisco lovers. New edition has several new pictures and essays. It serves as a great gift if you are visiting someone and want to show off the city you live in

Whether you have children or not Buy this book. If you have children read them the landscape poetry in here. They will sing them in their sleep. It will take them on magical journeys to happy places and you also.

I just started browsing through a book of his poems in spanish one day and loved them, but my spanish is marginal. This has the spanish poems side by side with english translations, many of which I don't really like because they do things like switch words and lines and take a little too much freedom and change the spirit of the poem, but that's okay. You can read the spanish, read the english, and see exactly what has been changed, but the beauty is in the spanish ones, and though his vocabulary is large, yours doesn't really have to be to appreciate the sound and sight of these poems in spanish. I love many of the sonnets, plus the king of harlem, which reminds me of HCE from Finnegans Wake, this character that becomes the landscape itself, "after walking", and many others from the poet in new york. I've just been getting into some spanish poets after reading some st john of the cross and seeing what types of flows and life can be infused into words in this language, and these dark, bloody grimy oozes of language have had me high for weeks.

Brilliant, emotions of positive and negative are tasted in this work

I could not put it down. The interpretations of Goya's great works are riveting and convincing. It has taken 200 years to discover the true content of that shadowy painting behind the bizarre portrait of "The Family of Charles IV." It has taken 200 years to realize that Goya's "Caprichos" should be read as a kind of dark revision of the beloved Spanish classic, "Don Quixote." It has taken 200 years to finally examine, as a body of works, Goya's alarming, pervasive, and private interest in images of sexual violence. How this plays out in the "Disasters of War" is uncanny. It has taken 200 years to place the "Majas" in historical context, dating back to Titian's "Venus" as well as forward to Manet's "Olympia": sacred and profane, nude and clothed. Finally, the author serves as our guide into and through the macabre "House of the Deafman." He brings out of the shadows all of the latest findings on the "black paintings" and then some. After reading his account, you will not view these enigmatically haunting paintings in the same light. After reading this book, you will not view Goya in the same light.

Very few books are able to penetrate into an artist's motives for creating works of art. This one does. Beyond the fact that the author offers convincing new interpretations of Goya's great works, he does so with a style that is utterly captivating, with language that is stunningly clear, with art historical acumen that is brilliantly insightful. The book has the look and feel as if Goya had written it himself. We enter into the mind of one the most troubled and versatile geniuses the art world has ever produced. Quite an accomplishment in itself.

Literally, from the front to the back cover, The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya, by John J. Ciofalo is a book to savor, to ponder, and to read. In five chapters, the author takes us on a fascinating journey from the 1770's through the courts and royalty of Spain, the French Revolution and Napoleon, past the dreams of reason, visions of death and destruction, to the realms of sex and violence, dark mythology and haunting memories. Goya is a book to savor- to enjoy its stunning color plates and black and white figures and to delight in its clarity of word and phrase. It is a book to ponder- to muse at its view of nobility and the Church and to consider its landscape of war and human cruelty. It is foremost a book to read- to wonder at the artist's scope of interests and subjects and to marvel at his aspirations, "no less than to...replace the prevailing status of artist as copyist, as craftsperson, as royal servant, with a status more hallowed, more elite, more reflective of his own beliefs on the nature of creativity and genius. A status, that is, something like nobility. This was an extremely radical idea for a Spaniard of that time. It was an agenda, as it turned out, for revolution." With penetrating insight and a sprinkling of humor, John J. Ciofalo has made the life and times of Goya, one of the most enigmatic, controversial, and misunderstood artists of any era, accessible to all readers, regardless of art or historical background knowledge. This is a book that speaks intelligently and frankly to our humanity. It is simultaneously shocking and delightful as it weaves a tapestry of human savagery and nobility from the common thread of self-portraiture. I enthusiastically recommend The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya by John J. Ciofalo. It is well worth the journey.

I thought this book was very well written. Even though I'm a bit too old to be reading it I still enjoyed it. Shannon is an Irish immigrant that has just moved with her family to San Francisco in 1880. Although she misses her old home she soon makes some very good friends, one of them is a girl called Betsy. Shannon's father is a doctor so one day she goes with him to Chinatown so he can get some medical supplies at a Chinese shop that alsp sells pets. Shannon gets off to a bad start with the shopkeeper when she frees some birds in the shop without thinking first. At the shop Shannon sees a Chinese girl in a window who looks sad. This book is very enticing as Shannon and Betsy set out one night to help rescue Le Ming, (the Chinese girl). It turns out that Mr. Wong, the shopkeeper, is most likely part of a gang that sells children as slaves. When Shannon pretends that she has alerted the Constable, he leaves in a hurry. Since Le Ming has no where to go she stays with Shannon's family until there is a court case concerning the kidnapping gang. This is a wonderful book. I really enjoyed it. It's a nice book to read when you don't want to have to feel committed to a book for a long time. You should read it!
Sandy

This book is SO cool! I really liked the way Shannon and her freind Helped Mi Ling. I think the next two books about Shannon will be interesting. I can't wait to read them!

Shannon is a ten year old girl who has just arrived in San Francisco from Ireland. On an errand to Chinatown with her father, she sees a young girl in a window. Who is she? Why is she there? Shannon, with the help of a new friend, is determined to find out.

San Francisco is a very "livable" city, especially without a car to worry or pay for. "Short Bike Rides..." suggests two dozen fun routes in and around the city that allow you to make the most of living here without a car. From the fastest way to get across town, to a wonderful rides in Marin and the East Bay I have ridden nearly all of these rides, and enjoyed them immensely. Not only are the directions and maps clear, but Kingman's comments are often very entertaining. There is also a handy supplement in the back listing public transportation contacts for taking your bike on BART, CalTrain etc.. Absolutely essential for any SF cyclist - commuter, weekend warrior, out of towner, tourist entertainer. And for less than $10 I have used this book 10x as much as any of the other rides books I have.

One note: I would assume Kingman is one hell of climber, since he does tend to downplay the physical effort required to climb the "hilly terrain" of some the rides.

This is my favorite bike rides book. It's an excellent read and lets you see the best of the city.

Not only is Henry Kingman's book a great way for visitors to explore San Francisco by bicycle, it is also a handy reference guide for local cyclists looking for new or better routes. Every S.F. cyclist should have a copy.

I read this book in two sittings. Would have finished it in one, but I had to go to work. The characters are real and the dialogue/discriptions ring true. Lots of novelists use San Francisco as a backdrop, but few get it down this well. A great first novel.

I haven't read a compeling book like this in years! It is beautifully scripted, with so many complicated twists and turns that you cannot put the book down. The story is raw and it not only rubs you, it grates you in ways that you didn't know you even liked. Its a look at the person that is within us all and the complications that have brought us to be. This book challenges the senses on every page with its knarled and tangled story of love, hate, compassion, obsession and in the end peace and healing. Its biggest triumph is staying true to its roughness and realistic in its story.

Lettieri writes with grace and authority. I couldn't put it down!
Sinner's Paradise is a profound, disturbing and beautifully crafted novel. Powerfully sensual yet brittle and real, transports us to the seamier side of the psyche. Enjoy the ride; it's a wild one!

I can see war in these pages, but it's more than that. It's also about ordinary people and their lives, not just Vietnamese culture but something universal in all of us. Highly recommend!

Read this beautiful collection of poems. They will move you with their grace, insight and strength. Notice the blank spaces between the words and lines-more is said at these broken places than mere words.

This is a very impressive book of poetry. Mong-Lan is a gifted writer who conveys the lyricism of language in the description of diverse experiences in Vietnam. Highly recommended.

These sixty portraits of American strangers are rich with an intelligent, questioning beauty. I was dazzled by the exhibit in San Francisco, but now I'm especially glad to have the accompanying book. I rarely find it worthwhile to purchase museum exhibit catalogues, but what I love about "Stranger Passing" is that I can ponder a given image as long as I like, "reading and re-reading" it as I would a really good short story. Indeed, many of these portraits seem as laden with interpretive possibilities as a story by Chekhov or Alice Munro or T. C. Boyle. From a grizzled woman selling papers in the middle of a Colorado boulevard, to a solitary New York banker having dinner, his aloneness matched by a single tulip in front of his little bistro table: I found myself deeply moved by the lavish yet subtle artistry Sternfeld has bestowed on these people and places--each one unique yet somehow familiar--that he encountered in this strange and wonderful country of ours.

This is the best photographic testament to the USA since Robert Frank came to shore and showed us how strange and beautiful our country was nearly fifty years ago. The subject of these photographs are both ordinary and extraordinary people, who we may cross paths with during any given day. The brilliance of Sternfeld's art is the way these images draw you into the world of each subject. Even the most superficially mundane subject such as two suburban kids standing in a cul-de-sac is cause for reflection. Most of these portraits economically use the scenery to define the world of each individual. In the end, the images are a celebration of anonymous Americans (one can't say "typical" because this collection shows you that there is no such thing as a typical American) in common settings. In my mind, the best images here evoke the mystery and power of a Vermeer painting. The way they heighten our experience of everyday images is what I think they call art.
A side note: If you have the chance, you must see the exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The hyperreal poster-size prints are a wonder to behold. And the cumulative effect of these images leaves one exaltant. (Oh yeah, there's also a pretty good Ansel Adams exhibit curated by John Szarkowski on the floor above.)

Joel Sternfeld travels the roads of America, and takes pictures with his large-format camera. Although all his pictures include people in various situations (attending a party, selling coffee, hanging out in their own homes, vacationing, promenading, relaxing, observing, working), what he is really interested in, is the depiction of landscapes and soft outplay of the mid-afternoon light. There is an overwhelming sense of loneliness. His composition style is superb; his depiction of quality of light reflections of the industrial surfaces is without precedence. In my opinion, Sternfeld really stands on its own. Not since Robert Frank's "The Americans" have I seen such a collection. His compositions are best reminiscent of Philip-Lorca diCorcia's; but somehow people are not the center of attention (and sometimes not even of focus), what is important is the quality of landscapes and how they shape human lives.