Gray Brechin’s official website
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.
In the News
Chasing Bay Area artifacts of the New Deal
By John King, San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 2008
Articles & Publications
Read Gray’s articles from publications including Antipode, The New York Times, and Focus.
Recent articles on the Web:
News Analysis: Public Relations (Again) Trumps Public Safety at UC Berkeley
The Berkeley Daily Planet, October 16, 2008
Excavating The Buried Civilization of Roosevelt’s New Deal
Newgeography.com, August 13, 2008
Forgotten Foundation: The New Deal for Bay Area Parks
Bay Nature, January-March 2008
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…
GrayBrechin.net
Welcome to the new official website for Gray Brechin. Note: graybrechin.com is not Gray’s website. Only GrayBrechin.net is authorized. Please update your bookmarks.
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
March 4, 2009: Urban Parasitism: The Case of Imperial San Francisco's Impact on the Pacific Basin
U.C. Davis Geography Group Distinguished Speakers Series on The History of California's Landscapes
See Gray’s past appearances.
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.