Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge
Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge written by Kevin Starr Studio : Bloomsbury Press by Bloomsbury Press Release Date : 2010-07-06 Publisher : Bloomsbury Press Released : 2010-07-06 Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days Number of Items : 1 EAN : 9781596915343 Avg. Customer Rating:(based on 8 reviews)
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Features Of 'Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge'
ISBN13: 9781596915343
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Editorial Reviews for 'Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge'
Product Description
The Golden Gate Bridge links the urbanity of San Francisco with the wild headlands of Marin County, as if to suggest the paradox of California and America itselfthe place that Fitzgerald saw as the last spot commensurate with the human capacity for wonder. The bridge, completed in 1937, also announced to the world America's engineering prowess and full assumption of its destined continental dominance. The Golden Gate is a counterpart to the Statue of Liberty, pronouncing American achievement in an unmistakable American fashion. The nation's very history is expressed in the bridge's art deco style and stark verticality. Kevin Starr's Golden Gate is a brilliant and passionate telling of the history of the bridge, and the rich and peculiar history of the California experience. The Golden Gate is a grand public work, a symbol and a very real bridge, a magnet for both postcard photographs and suicides. In this compact but comprehensive narrative, Starr unfolds the hidden-in-plain-sight meaning of the Golden Gate, putting it in its place among classic works of art.
An ecstatic meditation on the complicated drama of the Golden Gate Bridge and a chronicle of its history.”Wall Street Journal
Such a broad perspective is but one of the many pleasures to be had reading Kevin Starr’s engrossing new history, Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge. He tells the rich story of the massive public works project in a tidy 200 pages. It makes for a wonderful and never sluggish overviewcomplete with fine reproductions of paintings and photographsthat nevertheless contains many enlightening details. A small wonder in its own right.”San Francisco Chronicle
"A necessary salve for a once-golden state"The New Republic
Starr isn't seduced by the romantic or melancholic image of the fog-shrouded structure so much as committed to celebrate with great acumen and an oft-oratorial voice that unites broad yet vital references in a turn of phrase its greatness. His book is as well-ordered and constructed as its subject, with cleanly presented chapters outlining the bridge's relationship to subjects such as politics, money, and design, saving the more ambiguous yet also perhaps richest? areas of suicide and art for last.” San Francisco Bay Guardian
Starr has focused his impressive talents on a book-length study of a single entity the Golden Gate Bridge. In so doing, he demonstrates both that the bridge is deserving of such lavish treatment and that he himself is well worthy of his glorious subject. Others have done it before, but not with the unique combination of poetry and practicality that enliven "Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge." Starr's compact treatment (less than 200 pages) is part lyrical homage to an inspiring landmark and part encyclopedic account of the steps necessary to design, approve and construct one of the most ambitious public works projects ever undertaken.” Contra Costa Times
An informative and easily digestible chronicle.” Booklist
Accurately illustrated, readable, and rewarding. Starr’s stellar book encompasses politics, finances, design, art, photography, film, construction, history, bibliography, and even suicide, which occurs about every other week. Highly recommended an exciting history of a grand architectural landmark.”Library Journal
A jeweler’s assessment of the Brooklyn Bridge’s west coast rival Starr neatly appraises the Golden Gate’s every facet, attempting to judge its qualities and to convey its essence, its singular bridgeness.’ In design and execution, every bit as worthy of the bridge it celebrates.”Kirkus Reviews
With signature panache, Starr offers a history as streamlined and elegant as the great bridge itself.”Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear
The loving and meticulous manner in which Kevin Starr has constructed this paean to one of the world's most admired architectural icons is everything that we have come to expect from the creator of the California Dream series, and more. This book is the ideal companion to the bridge, magisterial in authority, intimate in detail and affectionate in tone: an entirely befitting classic.”Simon Winchester, author of The Man Who Loved China and The Professor and the Madman
Kevin Starr has written a delightful and most readable recounting of the epic story of the Golden Gate Bridge, covering in a remarkably concise way its origins and creative financing, its design and construction, and its status of one of the world’s most iconic structures.”Henry Petroski, Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and Professor of History, Duke University, and author of Engineers of Dreams and The Essential Engineer
When the great history of California is written oh wait. It already was. By Kevin Starr, of course. In Golden Gate, Starr focuses all that erudition and wit on the perfect subject. Nobody does it better. Nobody could.”Virginia Scharff, University of New Mexico, author of Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement and the West and Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age
Customer Reviews for 'Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge'
Less than the bridge itself
The Golden Gate bridge is a work of art; this book isn't.
It's a readable account of the bridge and the controversy around its creation. The reality is people of the San Francisco area have far more imagination, talent and sense of the future than some of their civic leaders; which is why San Francisco has "Silicon Valley" and places such as Phoenix have an abundance of empty warehouses.
Every city has a choice between mediocrity and dull conformity, or greatness. Creation of a truly iconic work of art, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, is much more than a municipal debate. It defines a community for decades; a bold vision tells everyone that new ideas are welcome. Phoenix is a way station for people who are fleeing California; San Francisco is a city where people "leave their heart" when they leave.
Starr does a workable job in describing creation of the bridge; he misses the spark of inspiration that is the creative genius behind its elegant design. Like many works of great art, it looked impossible as a proposal and inevitable once completed. It would help immensely to include pictures of rejected alternatives. Obviously, a copy of the Brooklyn Bridge or the cantilever of the Quebec Bridge would have been far out-of-place in expressing the California spirit.
As a Canadian, California is always the "test flight" version of what the future can offer to those with the courage to embrace new ideas. It's not that Starr isn't competent; it's just that his portrayal seems somewhat less than the bridge itself.
A Short History of the Many Facets of the Great Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is on anyone's list of the most beautiful bridges, and is one of the most spectacular of engineering and artistic achievements. Kevin Starr is a historian who has concentrated on California history, and is the perfect author to write an appreciation of the bridge. _Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge_ (Bloomsbury Press) is not a formal history, although it takes in the history of the region and the development around the bay, the financial and political drives and pressures that formed the idea of the bridge and its physical construction, and the subsequent effect of the bridge on the people who use it or see it every day. The book could be a lot bigger, given its epic subject. It could also have a lot more pictures, since the bridge is inherently beautiful and has inspired plenty of photographers and filmmakers to focus on it. Starr's book is as far as you can get from a coffee-table volume. Nonetheless, it is gracefully written by an author that is passionate about history and who is not the only one who feels drawn to the bridge as "a testimony to the creativity of mankind."
A bridge on that site was first imagined in the 1850s. Ferries did well enough before the automobile came along. Starr rightly spends many pages on a vital but undramatic part of the bridge's story, its financing. Even a bridge that everyone knew would be helpful was a tough sell at the start of the depression. The economy was too precarious for such a venture, said the Taxpayers' Committee Against the Golden Gate Bridge. The ferry companies joined in and started up years of legal maneuvering to try to prevent actions like the sale of bonds for the bridge. The chief planner for the bridge was Joseph Strauss, whose first design for the bridge was a failure, "an upside down rat trap" someone called it, a structure that would have been the sort of eyesore the Sierra Club and others had warned would pollute a magical site. Strauss, as befits any man with big plans, had a powerful ego, but he was wise enough to accept criticisms of his design and come up with something new by admitting contributions from a team of designers, engineers, and architects. With their help, the bridge took on its distinctive look with accentuation of the stepped-back arches, chevron decoration on the horizontal cross bracings, and decorative wing-like brackets below the bracings. It is hard to imagine the bridge any color than its current red (actually, it is called "International Orange"), but that wasn't the original choice. There were actually many choices; the bridge might have been all gray, or all black. The Navy thought that ships could best see a bridge that had yellow and black striping, while the Army Air Corps thought that red and white stripes would be more visible from the air. While the choices were being mulled over, primer was put on the bridge's metal elements to protect it, orange primer that as people got used to it seemed like just the color to give warning contrast without any need for striping and the resultant fragmentation.
The bridge is an engineering wonder, an artistic inspiration, and a triumph of civic planning and finance. It is also a handy tool for suicide, a subject covered in one of the later chapters here. Something close to thirty people a year use the bridge to end their lives, and it's an efficient method. The very few who have survived report that on the way down, they felt regret that they had jumped; surely many others who succeeded had the same last thoughts. There have been proposals to erect suicide barriers, which in other structures have sometimes eliminated jumping completely; this bumps against the aesthetics of the bridge, whose fans say it just wouldn't look the same. It's a nice reminder of how seriously people take the appearance of a bridge that they consider in many ways "their" bridge, a structure that has been taken to heart in ways other architectural markers have not. Starr's volume, showing how he and others appreciate the bridge in its multiple roles in engineering, transport, and artistry, is a loving tribute.
Breathless excitement
Fun little book about one of my favorite subjects! Starr's writing is a little breathless for my taste, but I tend to get breathless about the Golden Gate Bridge myself, so I'm willing to cut him a little slack in that area. It's a quick read, actually kinda light on the detail, more interested in painting a broad picture than getting down to the nitty gritty. Which is fine. It's a great primer for someone wanting to do more serious research into the subject, or simply a great read for someone looking for some general background information -- and a rather idealized and poetic portrait -- on what I consider to be one of the defining architectural achievements of the 20th century. [close]
Huge Disappoointment
Starr's book was well reviewed in the WSJ so I bought it, sight unseen on Factsinfostuff. Bad mistake. Sure there's some financial and sociological history, a few personality crumbs of those who pushed and tugged to get the bridge built or stopped. But the photos -- well, worse than looking through your grandmother's scrapbook of 2" x 3" shots -- and this on a subject that cries out for photo coverage!
The writing is worse than the photos. Try page 124: "Just as the towers, when standing alone, were possessed, if only momentarily, of their own coherent beauty and meaning, the sections of the roadway advancing toward each other across the strait -- like the two sections of railway advancing across the continent in the last century -- emanated a drama of their own, of technology in motion, struggling toward its final form, and the brave new future technology would create." Really. I wouldn't call it sophomoric; it's not that advanced. Where was the editor? Was this a vanity press edition?!
Finally, there's not much there. A short page count, made triply short by a small page size and widely spaced lines. I've seen longer Vanity Fair articles. And in view of the overall product, I was glad that there wasn't more of it.
Does Factsinfostuff have a refund policy?
Excellant
After a trip to the San Francisco area in June 2010 did not know how much I miss the Bay Area. Beautiful site looking at the bridge from the city. You can reach out and touch it.
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