Dr. Gray Brechin grew up in and witnessed firsthand the conversion of California's Santa Clara Valley from carbon- to silicon-based life forms. Witnessing that change — along with a 1985 sojourn in Venice — imbued Brechin with a lasting concern for the environmental costs of perpetual and heedless urban growth.
About Gray Brechin…
Contact: (510) 642-5987 or
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Excavating The Buried Civilization of Roosevelt’s New Deal
Newgeography.com, August 13, 2008
Articles & Publications
Read Gray’s articles from publications including Antipode, The New York Times, and Focus.
Teaching
Dr. Brechin has taught since 1986 at numerous institutions, including U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Mills College, California College of Arts and Crafts, and University of California Extension. See all teaching work…
Books
In addition to numerous articles, Gray Brechin has published two books taking on the fragile and contentious relationship between the Western United States as an earthly paradise and the settlers who came to inhabit these places. More books…
Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999
» Buy now at UC Press
Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream
with photographer Robert Dawson
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999
» Buy now at UC Press
Upcoming Speaking Appearances
Progress Report on the California Living New Deal Project
Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 7 PM
California History Dinner,
Institute for Research on Labor & Employment
2521 Channing Way,
Berkeley, CA
For more info: (510) 642-3903
The Indispensable New Deal
October 21, 2008
Drexel University,
Philadelphia, PA
Past appearances by Gray Brechin…
California’s Living New Deal Project
The Living New Deal Project is an unprecedented and growing collaborative effort to identify, map, and interpret the vast public works legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal in California, as well as to demonstrate how other states and municipalities can do the same. With generous seed funding from the Columbia Foundation and
others, the California Historical Society has partnered with U.C. Berkeley's Institute for Research in Labor and Employment Library and the California Studies Center to engage Californians in a collective act of rediscovery not only of vital physical remains but of timeless issues of civics in a living democracy.