Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B0081CDL50 | Format: EPUB
Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love Description
Audie Award Nominee, History, 2013
Season of the Witch is the first book to fully capture the dark magic of San Francisco in this breathtaking period, when the city radically changed itself - and then revolutionized the world. The cool gray city of love was the epicenter of the 1960s cultural revolution. But by the early 1970s, San Francisco's ecstatic experiment came crashing down from its starry heights. The city was rocked by savage murder sprees, mysterious terror campaigns, political assassinations, street riots, and finally a terrifying sexual epidemic. No other city endured so many calamities in such a short time span.
David Talbot takes us deep into the riveting story of his city's ascent, decline, and heroic recovery. He draws intimate portraits of San Francisco's legendary demons and saviors: Charles Manson, Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Bill Graham, Herb Caen, the Cockettes, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Joe Montana and the Super Bowl 49ers. He reveals how the city emerged from the trials of this period with a new brand of "San Francisco values", including gay marriage, medical marijuana, immigration sanctuary, universal health care, recycling, renewable energy, consumer safety, and a living wage mandate. Considered radical when they were first introduced, these ideas have become the bedrock of decent society in many parts of the country, and exemplify the ways that the city now inspires us toward a live-and-let-live tolerance, a shared sense of humanity, and an openness to change.
As a new generation of activists and dreamers seeks its own path to a more enlightened future, Season of the Witch - with its epic tale of the wild and bloody birth of San Francisco values - offers both inspiration and cautionary wisdom.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 17 hours
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: May 8, 2012
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0081CDL50
The book is well written, informative, and entertaining. But it is a strange exercise to read, written by someone with a great deal of information and skill but oddly lacking in a native grounding here. The result is a story told with great facility, but flawed in its biased and incomplete perspective and rather frequent lapses in accuracy.
As a native San Francisco Irish-American Catholic of several generations who came of age here in the era he describes, I find that the book takes a lot of liberties and leaves some unfortunate residues. He feels pretty free to slam Irish Catholic San Francisco, a community great in number with roots in the community that precede the Gold Rush. He even uses an ethnic slur: "Mick" in one passage - certainly you would not feel emboldened to present this kind of bias against any other religious or ethnic group in a mainstream non-fiction book release. (It seems that open ethnic and religious bias is quite OK in progressive circles if you are on the 'right' side of the struggle.)
This odd anti-Catholic, sort of love-hate vis the Irish, bias pervades the book. I think that the author found that he could easily portray old school working class San Francisco in a manner of stereotyping by simply calling the old establishment 'the Irish Catholics' (who certainly had power but never 'owned' the City) without having to do a whole lot of challenging research. He can't bring himself to say something nice about beautiful Sts. Peter & Paul's in North Beach without pairing it with a nasty criticism. This beloved church is one among dozens in the City that nurtured and educated hundreds of happy, well-adjusted people for whom the parish was the vital center of the community.
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