Edith Sparks, USA:  The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.  Late nineteenth-century San Francisco was an ethnically diverse but male-dominated society bustling from rowdy gold rush, earthquakes, and explosive economic growth.  Within this booming marketplace, some women stepped beyond their roles as wives, caregivers, and homemakers to start businesses that combined family concerns with money-making activities.  Edith Sparks traces the experiences of these women entrepreneurs, exploring who they were, why they started businesses, how they attracted customers and managed finances, and how they dealt with failure.  (Google it!)

Mildred Crowl Martin, Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books Publishers, 1977.  Captured here in words and pictures are the life, spirit, and adventures of a gently reared Scotswoman who became known to some as the savior and to others as the scourge of San Francisco’s Chinatown.  In 1895 Donaldina Mackenzie Cameron (1869-1968) came to Chinatown to teach sewing for a year in the Presbyterian Home for Girls. Read about how she tried to destroy the evil of the “yellow slave trade” for 40 years.  (Google it!)

Yong Chen, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Chen explores the trans-Pacific links between the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco and their ancestral homeland in Guangdong province through Chinese and English language newspapers and magazines, personal diaries and papers, census manuscripts, and many contemporary writings of the period.  (Google it!)

Alexandra Chappell, Editor. San Francisco: CA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art & Universe Publishing, 2002. “City by the Bay pairs works of art and literature that evoke the city’s spirit – from its frontier rowdiness and resilience in the face of catastrophe to its nourish glamour and European charm featuring photographs, paintings and graphic artworks drawn primarily from the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.”  (Google it!)

Nayan Shah,  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. “Contagious Divides charts the dynamic transformation of representations of Chinese immigrants from medical menace in the nineteenth century to model citizen in the mid-twentieth century examining cultural politics of public health and Chinese immigration.”  (Google it!)

Kristin Wong & Kathryn Wong, Saline, MI:  New Earth Enterprises, 2012.  Donaldina Cameron was a Scottish-American woman who came to San Francisco’s Chinatown to teach sewing for one year.  She stayed after finding so many young Chinese girls forced to be sex slaves by the Chinese organized crime.  She rescued hundreds of slaves and became known as the “most loved and hated woman in all of Chinatown”.  (Google it!)

Moonbeam Tong Lee, Fong Brothers Printing, Inc., 1987. Biography of Edwar Lee, the first American-born Chinese Methodist minister, starts off describing the social and political climate before his birth in 1902, his personal accomplishments and work in the Church up to the age of 85 when this book was written by his wife.  (Google it!)

Rand Richards, Canada: Heritage House Publishers, 2007. Each of the ten chapters historically chronicles a meaningful period of time between significant milestones (i.e. the goldrush of 1849 or the earthquake of 1906).  (Google it!)

J. Kavanagh, San Francisco, CA: Gilmartin Publishing,1922. A comprehensive history of the formation and work of the Sisters of the Holy Family in San Francisco.  (Google it!)

Arthur E. Hippler, New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1974.  This study is an attempt to show the interrelationship of the social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of life in a black ghetto in San Francisco.  (Google it!)

Gray Brechin, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. Locates San Francisco within the historical context of America’s Manifest Destiny, its strategic significance to the United States as both a commercial and military port for geo-political expansion into the Pacific.  (Google it!)

Rebecca Solnit,  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.  “Infinite City features Rebecca Solnit as cultural and historical tour guide through the city she calls home."--Shelf Awareness Rebecca Solnit's reinvention of the traditional atlas, searches out the answer by examining the many layers of meaning in one place, the San Francisco Bay Area.  (Google it!)

Maxine Cass, Guilford, CT.  Morris Book Publishing, 2006. Thirty stories recounting some of San Francisco’s most captivating moments from 1776 to 2004.  (Google it!)

Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr., NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013   “Tomas Summers Sandoval brings much-needed attention to the social history and lived experiences of Latinos in the region and draws special attention to the histories of political activism and political resistance that have been critical to San Francisco’s development.  His new book fills one of the largest holes in Latino historiography and helps readers of all stripes to better understand the centrality of Latinos in the making of the city.”  - Stephen J. Pitti, Yale University.  (Google it!)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy J. Peters, New York, NY:  Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1980. Literary San Francisco  presents, in rare photographs and sharp commentary, the literary great and not-so-great who lived in, or left their mark on, San Francisco. Some of the authors included are Mark  Twain, Adah Isaacs Menken, Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith, and Robert Louis Stevenson.  (Google it!)

Charles F. Adams, Sanger, CA: Word Dancer Press, 2005.  Murders in San Francisco, from 1856 to the City Hall murders of 1978, that captivated both the city and the country.   (Google it!)

James Brook, Chris Carlsson & Nancy J. Peters, San Francisco, CA: City Lights Publishers, 1998.  An anthology of lost, forgotten and obscured histories of San Francisco.  Stories of immigrants and minorities, sailors and waterfront workers, and poets, artists and neighborhood activists.  (Google it!)

John Miller, ed., San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1990.  Well-known authors such as Amy Tan, Jack Kerouac and Anne Lamott offer reflective essays on San Francisco.  (Google it!)

James Beach Alexander & James Lee Heig , San Francisco, CA:   Scottwall Associates, 2002.  “The result of some sixty years of research into the city’s history and its architecture, this book brings the two subject together in a new and unique way.  Hundreds of historic pictures reflect life in the 19th century, while full-color photographs show us what has survived to the 21st century.  The book is an important contribution to San Francisco.”   –Charles Fracchia, author, and Founding President, San Francisco Historical Society.  (Google it!)

Mick Sinclair, Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2004.  Part of the “Cities of Imagination” series, Sinclair provides an easy-to-read overview of the city’s geography, diverse cultures, and interesting histories.  (Google it!)

Charles A. Fracchia & Thomas Stauffer, San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Chamber of Commerce & Marcoa Publishing Inc. 2000. With more than 100 historical photographs, Stauffer pays tribute to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce's commitment to the economic development of the city during the past 150 years and Fracchia tells of the people and the forces that have shaped the city since its founding as an outpost of the Spanish empire.  (Google it!)

Edited by Peter Maravelis, New York, NY: Akashic Books, 2009.  “With the release of the first volume of San Francisco Noir, we brought together a team of seasoned writers to compose original works that gave the reader a sinister sense of the city.  The success of that volume was encouraging and we have returned with a new task at hand: to present a collection of classic reprints, some hitherto buried by the passage of time, which depict a town riddled by inequity from its very beginnings. . .”  –Peter Maravelis.  (Google it!)

John Bernard McGloin, S.J., San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978.  An historical overview of San Francisco as compiled by a history professor at the University of San Francisco.  (Google it!)

James R. Smith, Sanger, CA: Word Dancer Press, 2005.  “With long-forgotten stories and evocative photographs, San Francisco's Lost Landmarks showcases the once-familiar sites that have faded into dim memories and hazy legends.”  (Google it!)

Tom Cole, San Francisco, CA: LEXICOSE, 1981.  This book tells the story of the cable cars, the gaudy mansions, the coming of the transcontinental railroad, the fabulous Silver Rush, the city’s early labor strife and political shenanigans, the Earthquake and Fire of ’06, two World Wars, two World’s Fairs, the building of two great bridges-the whole story to the beginning of the 80’s.  (Google it!)

Lisa Montanarelli and Ann Harrison, Bramley Road, London:  PRC Publishing, 2005.  Strange but True: San Francisco brings together the city’s most bizarre news items, almost-believable urban myths, incredibly antiquated laws, curious little-known facts, and neighborhood eccentric oddballs and weirdos into one compulsively readable guide.  (Google it!)

Samuel Dickson, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957.  These tales were told to the author, Samuel Dickson, throughout his life.  Whether told to him by his father, friends, or found in books, he has compiled them all and put them in this book.  Many of these stories were told by the author on the radio station KNBC in San Francisco.(Google it!)

Victor Low, San Francisco, CA: East/West Publishing Company, Inc., 1982. How Chinese Americans moved the Supreme Court and the U.S. government to recognize the basic right of children with limited language skills.  (Google it!)

Lorna E. Logan, Wilson Creek, WA:  Crawford Hobby Print Shop-Rev. David H. Crawford, 1976.  A celebration of the 100 years that Cameron House has served the vulnerable in San Francisco’s Chinatown by telling the story of how Cameron House came into existence, the dedication and leadership of Donaldina Cameron and the years since her retirement, and a witness to the continued faithfulness of God through the years.  Opening its doors in 1874 by a group of Christian women to be a refuge for Chinese women and girls caught in the slave trade, it has become a pillar in the Chinatown community as it continues to serve their families.  (Google it!)

Fred Rosenbaum, Berkeley, CA: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2000.  “The frenzy of the Gold Rush, the calamity of the 1906 earthquake and fire and the urban challenges of the present day are shown to be intertwined with the fate of the synagogue whose leading members have invariably been counted among the city’s most prominent citizens… revealing the response of a dynamic religious institution to an increasingly complex modern world.”  (Google it!)

Edited by Antoinette May and Vernon Appleby, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.  This is a book of quotes from many prominent people about San Francisco.  The quotes are from people who lived in or visited San Francisco at any time from the 1800’s through the early 1990’s.  (Google it!)