What do you think?
Rate this book
San Francisco: The Story of a City
445 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
1 person is currently reading
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Read
February 17, 2009I expect too much from the Multnomah Co Library.
When I see a book entitled "San Francisco: The Story of a City," especially when I am looking for just such a book--i.e., a history of S.F. that runs more or less to the present day and that is not overly concerned with abstruse civic matters--I take it as given that said book will not be a bizarrely skewed such version of events.
But, because I fail to notice the "S.J." at the end of the author's name, I wind up with a book that IS bizarrely skewed, in essence, a conflation of popular history and history of the Jesuits in S.F. Just try to find a passage of more than three pages which does not involve somehow the Jesuits. Is San Francisco a Jesuit citadel? Not to my knowledge, but for McGloin, the tiniest pretext for introducing a Jesuit into matters is justification for doing so.
An account of the shooting of the journalist James King that somehow doesn't involve the Catholic church? Not at all-- one of the shooters, on the eve of his execution for the shooting, was married to Belle, his "mistress" (in McGloin's quaint account) by a Jesuit priest. That's just as important as a few pages on why James King is important to San Francisco, isn't it? Probably more important, so why not get rid of the passage about King, and talk about the Jesuit instead?
I won't be finishing this one.
When I see a book entitled "San Francisco: The Story of a City," especially when I am looking for just such a book--i.e., a history of S.F. that runs more or less to the present day and that is not overly concerned with abstruse civic matters--I take it as given that said book will not be a bizarrely skewed such version of events.
But, because I fail to notice the "S.J." at the end of the author's name, I wind up with a book that IS bizarrely skewed, in essence, a conflation of popular history and history of the Jesuits in S.F. Just try to find a passage of more than three pages which does not involve somehow the Jesuits. Is San Francisco a Jesuit citadel? Not to my knowledge, but for McGloin, the tiniest pretext for introducing a Jesuit into matters is justification for doing so.
An account of the shooting of the journalist James King that somehow doesn't involve the Catholic church? Not at all-- one of the shooters, on the eve of his execution for the shooting, was married to Belle, his "mistress" (in McGloin's quaint account) by a Jesuit priest. That's just as important as a few pages on why James King is important to San Francisco, isn't it? Probably more important, so why not get rid of the passage about King, and talk about the Jesuit instead?
I won't be finishing this one.
Displaying 1 of 1 review