Local poets were hoisted up into the windy towers of the new eastern span of the San Francisco—Oakland Bay Bridge in April 2011 to observe and map its progress and something of its soul. Their words, enhanced by the luminous photographs of Thomas Michael Alleman, are gathered in Everything Indicates, a tribute to the people designing and building the new bridge, and the waters it will span. Set to open in 2013, the eastern span will be the world’s largest self-anchored suspension span bridge; however, beyond this remarkable feat of engineering, the bridge is a literal lifeline for the diverse communities, individuals, and businesses of the San Francisco Bay Area and far beyond. The poems and photographs of Everything Indicates, which takes its title from Walt Whitman's “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” are themselves a bridge, bringing us closer to the common experience that unites us all.

Everything Indicates: Bay Bridge Poems & Portraits

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Heyday

Two hundred years ago, herds of elk and antelope dotted the hills of the San Francisco–Monterey Bay area. Grizzly bears lumbered down to the creeks to fish for silver salmon and steelhead trout. From vast marshlands geese, ducks, and other birds rose in thick clouds “with a sound like that of a hurricane.” This land of “inexpressible fertility,” as one early explorer described it, supported one of the densest Indian populations in all of North America.
One of the most ground-breaking and highly-acclaimed titles that Heyday has published, The Ohlone Way describes the culture of the Indian people who inhabited Bay Area prior to the arrival of Europeans. Recently included in the San Francisco Chronicle's Top 100 Western Non-Fiction list, The Ohlone Way has been described by critic Pat Holt as a “mini-classic.”

The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area

Biographies & Memoirs

Malcolm Margolin

Community & Culture

The 35th Anniversary of a Heyday Classic with a new cover and some updated material Here, in their own words, indigenous voices reclaim the narrative of California Indians. Before contact, California's Native people comprised five hundred independent tribal groups whose cultural and linguistic multiplicity expressed a sense of incalculable human richness. Reflecting that diversity, this collection of personal histories, songs, chants, and stories draws together a range of experiences from throughout the state and across generations to reveal the continuous Native presence in what is now called the Golden State. Speakers share traditional knowledge such as rites of passage, coyote tales, and dream journeys, and in equal measure they address the devastation that arrived with white people and the challenges that exist to this day-as well as the remarkable revitalization of their cultures over the past thirty years in particular. Variously funny, painful, insightful, and strikingly beautiful, The Way We Lived presents California's original sense of itself. This updated reissue contains a new foreword by Michael Connolly Miskwish (Campo Kumeyaay Nation) and a new introduction from the editor, Malcolm Margolin.

The Way We Lived: California Indian Reminiscences, Stories and Songs

Politics & Social Sciences

MARGOLIN, Malcolm. ed.

Social Sciences

On the afternoon of September 14, 1786, two French ships appeared off the coast of Monterey, the first foreign vessels to visit Spain's California colonies. Aboard was a party of eminent scientists, navigators, cartographers, illustrators, and physicians. For the next ten days the commander of this expedition, Jean François de La Pérouse, took detailed notes on the life and character of the area: its abundant wildlife, the labors of soldiers and monks, and the customs of Indians recently drawn into the mission. These observations provide a startling portrait of California two centuries ago.

Life in a California Mission: Monterey in 1786

History

de la Pérouse, Jean François

Americas

An illustrated edition of the well-loved tale in which world-famous naturalist John Muir recounts how he and a dog named Stickeen struggled to cross an Alaskan glacier during an ice storm. An exhilarating story that has become an American classic.
Published in conjunction with Rick Heide.

Stickeen

Children's Books

MUIR, JOHN

Biographies

At the turn of the century, the Sacramento Delta was home to thousands of Chinese immigrants. By day, laborers engaged in the back-breaking work of building the levees and harvesting crops. After work, many of them returned to the bustling, safe town of Locke. Locke, with its single-family homes, stores, saloons, restaurants, boarding houses, school, five gambling dens, and two brothels was the only village in the United States built and inhabited exclusively by Chinese.
Bitter Melon: Inside America's Last Rural Chinese Town is a collection of moving oral histories and stunning historical photographs (all printed in duotone), offers an unforgettable glimpse into this unique and vibrant community, and in doing so contributes significantly to our understanding of immigrant experience in California.

Bitter Melon: Inside America's Last Rural Chinese Town

Arts & Photography

Jeff Gillenkirk

James Motlow

Photography & Video

Before outsiders arrived, about 100 distinct Indian languages were spoken in California, many of them alive today. Each of these languages represents a unique way of understanding the world and expressing that understanding.
Flutes of Fire examines many different aspects of Indian languages: languages, such as Yana, in which men and women have markedly different ways of speaking; ingenious ways used in each language for counting. Hinton discusses how language can retain evidence of ancient migrations, and addresses what different groups are doing to keep languages alive and pass them down to the younger generations.

Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages

Hinton, Leanne

These fifteen stories bring the California Gold Rush to life with their boisterous assemblage of rough-clad miners, pistol-packing preachers, iron-willed women, and philosophical gamblers. Theirs was an unpredictable world, filled with gold strikes and freak tragedies, when the wisdom of the gambler sometimes counted for more than that of the preacher. A master storyteller, Harte weaves tales that seem to come directly from the campfire, where the spinning of yarns and swapping of lies were the highest form of entertainment.

Bret Harte's Gold Rush: "Outcasts of Poker Flat," "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Tennessee's Partner," and Other Favorites

HARTE, BRET

Regional U.S.

Originally published in 1937 in the later years of her extraordinary life, Harriet Lane Levy's memoirs of her childhood in San Francisco during the late 1800s give us a rare view into the traditional life and manners of an upper-middle-class Jewish family of the era. 
With sly wit and a writing style critics compared to Jane Austen's, Levy vividly portrays an often stifling world of parlors and sitting rooms, maids and cooks, family intrigue and neighborhood pretensions, eased by the warmth of family affections and Levy's own independent spirit. 
It was her unique sense of self that enabled Levy to break away from this quiet, comfortable, almost ritualistically bourgeois existence and go on from 920 O'Farrell to lead a rather unconventional life. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley at a time when very few women went to college, and wrote for The Wave, along with Frank Norris and Jack London. She then moved to Paris with Alice B. Toklas and became an intimate of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Matisse, and other leaders of the modern art movement. 
Written long after the familiar city of her youth had disappeared with the 1906 earthquake, these rich and thoughtful reminiscences reveal a Victorian world of surface formalities and underlying urgency.

920 O'Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco

Harriet Lane Levy

This book gives younger readers a close-up view of traditional California Indian life and early California. Thomas Jefferson Mayfield kept a wonderful secret for almost sixty years: the secret of his childhood among the Choinumne Indians of California's San Joaquin Valley. For twelve years he played and slept alongside Choinmune children, he hunted and fished with them, ate their food and wore their clothes. Adopted by Indians is the story of a boy who had an adventure that we can only dream about and it is absolutely true. Adopted by Indians has been approved by the California Department of Education and is listed in the Instructional Materials Approved for Legal Compliance Catalog.

Adopted by Indians: A True Story

Mayfield, Thomas Jefferson

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