USF Reading Project: Infinite City

Want to learn more about San Francisco history and its neighborhoods? Interested in map making? Here are links to resources that are online or available at USF's Gleeson Library.

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (a book by Rebecca Solnit)

Book Description and Additional Information

USF Reading Project Homepage

Exploring San Francisco

Books about San Francisco Neighborhoods

• On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, by Erick Lyle
• Historic San Francisco: A Concise History and Guide, by Rand Richards
• Neighborhoods in Transition: The Making of San Francisco's Ethnic and Nonconformist Communities, by Brian J. Godfrey
• Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, edited by James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters
• San Francisco in Maps and Views, by Sally B. Woodbridge
  
• Images of America Series, Arcadia Publishing - a collection of guides covering local history and focusing on specific neighborhoods, ethic groups, or historical landmarks in San Francisco.

Websites about San Francisco Neighborhoods

• San Francisco Historical Photographs Collection (see also Old S.F. for a nifty way to browse this collection)
• San Francisco Chronicle Guide to Neighborhoods
• San Francisco Museum and Historical Society
  

Walking Guides and Tours

• San Francisco City Guides - free walking tours of San Francisco led by community volunteers
  
• Historic Walks in San Francisco: 18 Trails through  the City's Past, by Rand Richards
• Walking San Francisco, by Liz Gans and Rick Newby

Exploring Cartography

Online Mapping Tools

• Mapping America: Every City Every Block - interactive mapping of 2010 Census data, courtesy of the NY Times.
• Google Mapping Tools - create your own custom maps or edit community maps using Google Maps.
• OpenStreetMap - think of it as "Wikipedia meets cartography" - a free, editable map of the entire world, made by people like you.
  

Books about Cartography

• Maps & Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, by Norman J.W. Thrower
• Drawing the Line: Tales of Maps and Cartocontroversy, by Mark Monmonier
• Maps and Politics, by Jeremy Black
• Mapping Graphic Navigational Systems, compiled and edited by Roger Fawcett-Tang with essays by William Owen
• Else/where: Mapping New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, edited by Janet Abrams and Peter Hall 

Collections of Unusual Maps

• An Atlas of Radical Cartography, edited by Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat
• You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, by Katharine Harmon
• The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, by Katharine Harmon with essays by Gayle Clemans
• Mapping the World: Stories of Geography, by Caroline & Martine Laffon
• Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, edited by James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow, Jr
• Hand Drawn Map Association, an online archive of user submitted maps and diagrams drawn by hand
• Historical Maps, from the collection of David Rumsey. Highlights include the pre-earthquake San Francisco 1905 Sanborn Insurance Atlas and 19th century maps by children.