Down by the Bay - by Matthew Booker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

San Francisco Bay is the largest and most productive estuary on the Pacific Coast of North America. It is also home to the oldest and densest urban settlements in the American West. Focusing on human inhabitation of the Bay since Ohlone times, Down by the Bay reveals the ongoing role of nature in shaping that history. From birds to oyster pirates, from gold miners to farmers, from salt ponds to ports, this is the first history of the San Francisco Bay and Delta as both a human and natural landscape. It offers invaluable context for current discussions over the best management and use of the Bay in the face of sea level rise.

From the Back Cover

"San Francisco Bay is the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of North America. Along with the adjoining delta formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, it also forms the solar plexus of California's complex, fragile plumbing system. In this incisive and original work, Matthew Booker vividly recounts the successive waves of interaction between people and place that have molded--and imperiled--the modern Bay. This is rich, cutting-edge environmental history at its best, and a compelling read, too." --David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945



"...A thorough and highly engaging account of the use and development of the Bay shoreline and intertidal zone, a region often understudied by cultural and ecological historians. This ecologically grounded narrative is an important contribution to our understanding of the development trajectory of the region."--Robin Grossinger, Senior Scientist, San Francisco Estuary Institute



"I see San Francisco Bay from my house everyday, but I no longer look at it in the same way. Matthew Booker's Down by the Bay is one of those books that transforms the familiar. He writes lucidly and eloquently about a forgotten past and an often hidden landscape that, once recognized, traces a possible future." --Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region

Review Quotes

"Down by the Bay is an intriguing, highly readable account of the neglected history of San Francisco Bay's tidelands."-- "Enviromental History"

"Booker gives the city a fresh face; the familiar becomes strange and wonderful. . . . Down by the Bay is a genuine pearl in the sea of contemporary environmental writing."-- "San Francisco Chronicle"

"...explores an impressive range of topics."-- "American Historical Review"

"...well written and filled with intriguing historical details that enliven the text."-- "Biological Conservation"

"Down by the Bay is a genuine pearl in the sea of contemporary environmental writing."-- "Boom"

"The history of San Francisco is not only the story of a great world city, it's also the story of a great body of water that both supported and was impacted by rapid urban growth. In his natural (and human) history of San Francisco Bay, author Matthew Morse Booker focuses on waterfront and tidal wetlands. It is there that decades of human activity, such as dredging and upriver hydraulic mining, have reshaped, polluted and irrevocably altered the marine environment."-- "Sacramento Bee"

About the Author

Matthew Morse Booker is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. He was previously Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford and leads the Between the Tides project at Stanford's Spatial History Lab, mapping San Francisco Bay's dynamic tidal margin.