What makes a place? Infinite City; Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas; searches out the answer by examining the many layers of meaning in one place; the San Francisco Bay Area. Aided by artists; writers; cartographers; and twenty-two gorgeous color maps; each of which illuminates the city and its surroundings as experienced by different inhabitants; Solnit takes us on a tour that will forever change the way we think about place. She explores the area thematically—connecting; for example; Eadweard Muybridge’s foundation of motion-picture technology with Alfred Hitchcock’s filming of Vertigo. Across an urban grid of just seven by seven miles; she finds seemingly unlimited landmarks and treasures—butterfly habitats; queer sites; murders; World War II shipyards; blues clubs; Zen Buddhist centers. She roams the political terrain; both progressive and conservative; and details the cultural geographies of the Mission District; the culture wars of the Fillmore; the South of Market world being devoured by redevelopment; and much; much more. Breathtakingly original; this atlas of the imagination invites us to search out the layers of San Francisco that carry meaning for us—or to discover our own infinite city; be it Cleveland; Toulouse; or Shanghai.CONTRIBUTORS:Cartographers: Ben Pease and Shizue SeigelDesigner: Lia TjandraArtists: Sandow Birk; Mona Caron; Jaime Cortez; Hugh D'Andrade; Robert Dawson; Paz de la Calzada; Jim Herrington; Ira Nowinski; Alison Pebworth; Michael Rauner; Gent Sturgeon; Sunaura TaylorWriters and researchers: Summer Brenner; Adriana Camarena; Chris Carlsson; Lisa Conrad; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Joshua Jelly-Schapiro; Paul La Farge; Genine Lentine; Stella Lochman; Aaron Shurin; Heather Smith; Richard WalkerAdditional cartography: Darin Jensen; Robin Grossinger and Ruth Askevold; San Francisco Estuary Institute
#764224 in Books 2007-03-20Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .77 x 6.00l; .95 #File Name: 0520251717318 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. I keep reading this over over again. I ...By ThatGalValI keep reading this over over again. I live on a street where not that far from me; up the hills...in the million dollar house range; I see many housekeepers; cleaners and nannies [primarily Latinas]; going to work...I find this subject "FASINATING"!0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. and she did find it very informative and very useful!By Richard MiddletonI can't really review the book; as I purchased it for my wife to read. She was reading the book for research purposes for a project she is putting together on domestic help in the United States and the overall question of immigration; and she did find it very informative and very useful!1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Inequalities Brought to LifeBy THE-DEADLY-DOG"Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence" is a perfect example of finding that little bit of lost knowledge that many push to the side or brush under the table.I would go so far as to call this a must read if you are interested in the inequalities that fellow humans face everyday and the struggles they go through.
