The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 14 November 2001
by Gray Brechin
In this impressive, somewhat polemical, book, Gray Brechin outlines the massive "pyramid of mining" that is responsible for environmental devastation in the Sierra Nevada, and has driven the history of Northern California since the first discovery of gold in the Golden State. From the giant mining concerns (condemned for their history as far back as Roman times), to their molders of opinion in San Francisco's corporate newspapers, to the development of nuclear weaponry in the Lawrence Labs of the University of California, few prominent figures in the economic development of San Francisco go unexamined in this well written critical study.
Brechin certainly has a point of view in this book. San Francisco rarely gets this kind of literary and historical thrashing. That treatment is usually reserved for Los Angeles. The author sets out to describe the massive abuses of economic and political power that resulted in such tremendous environmental destruction (including Hetch-Hetchy reservoir and a nuclear waste dump in the Pacific just outside the Golden Gate) in the name of "progress". He manages to bring to life the racial chauvanism of the latter half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th that drove the westward movement of European stock across the Atlantic, the American continent, to footholds in the Pacific basin. And he enlivens the wild Bay Area history of newspapers, water rights, warfare and development. Brechin quotes extensively from his vast resources, but occasionally seems to interpret these to a fault. Some quotes have a sarcastic ring to them that the author finds convenient to ignore. Others are expressed as if to condemn the writer without sufficient analysis of context or historical development. Brechin's viewpoint and his history cannot be faulted. Indeed, much of this is criticism long overdue. However, the narrowness of his approach, and the lack of a little more contextual analysis, brings this book close to the brink of cranky opinion. Nevertheless, the Hearsts, the de Youngs, the Crockers and countless others are here, at last, brought to task for their blind drive to wealth and power in San Francisco. It is a lively and dark story with, as seems to be Brechin's intent, countless descendant references to today's corporate and political environment. A troubling and interesting book.
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