Photograph of Gray Brechin, 2007

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

What’s New:
GrayBrechin.net

We're working on this new official website for Gray Brechin. Note: GrayBrechin.com is not Gray’s official website. Only GrayBrechin.net is authorized. Please update your bookmarks.

photo of Works Progress Administration plaque

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 - Gray Brechin, authorImperial 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 - Gray Brechin, authorFarewell, 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 andCLNDPothers, 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.

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