Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Kamiya (Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco) and illustrator Madonna (All Over Coffee) dispatch an eloquent love letter to the fabled city by the bay. “Cities are three-dimensional entities,” writes Kamiya. “But they also exist in a fourth dimension: time.” The chapters are comprised of site-based vignettes, which put exemplars of the city’s natural and man-made beauty in historical context. These include landmarks such as Lombard Street and the Palace of Fine Arts, which Kamiya describes as “a wild architectural acid trip, an ur-Disneyland” and a precursor of sorts to the Burning Man festival. But they also showcase lesser-known locales, such as the Tian Hou Temple (“simultaneously touristy, run-down, and real”) and Ina Coolbrith Park (“An Olympian platform from which Russian Hill denizens could observe the raucous city below”). Despite Kamiya’s pandemic-influenced prologue, the balance of the travelogue is a timeless deep dive into San Francisco’s past. Madonna’s inset pen and ink portraits both bring the reader into the vibe of each site and feel delightfully otherworldly. This artsy tour will appeal to those who may have left their hearts in San Fran, as well as armchair (and aspiring) travelers eager to learn more of its storied past. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Oct.)