The Best of Herb Caen, 1960-1975

by Herb Caen

First Edition, 1991. Pages clean and unmarked. Slight wear from time on shelf like you would see on a major chain. Immediate shipping

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1991

About the author

Herbert Eugene Caen was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—"A continuous love letter to San Francisco" —appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost sixty years (excepting a relatively brief defection to The San Francisco Examiner) and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

A special Pulitzer Prize called him the "voice and conscience" of San Francisco.

Reviews

[KC Cui · Rating 3 out of 5]

Semi interesting book by semi interesting author with occasionally interesting insight. I was hoping for a book that immersed you in the people & characters and lifestyles of San Francisco in the 60s and 70s and got, not that. I once read a critic call Joan Didion’s style of writing and observation “precious.” Caen is 100000x more. Half of his writing is distracting clever wordplay (I get it he’s a columnist) & on that note his voice got annoying af quick because it’s like. You not cute just because you’re like a old jaded cynic who occasionally lifts the veil to REVEAL —? an empathetic human heart. Especially bc his empathies are often directed at the wrong characters lol.

Substantively the most interesting parts were his impressions of different cross streets at that moment in time. & how much is the same, or different. We all still hate navigating Market. I wonder if he would be happy that the trolleys are still in fact running, albeit almost exclusively for tourists

I can’t tell what perspective he was writing from. Somebody who disdains nostalgia but is always always always looking for a San Francisco of yesteryear and is so absorbed in this that the San Francisco of 1968 basically passes him by. And as a reader I’m like wait wait it’s over? What happened? What did you see? And it may be that he saw nothing worth recording.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

For almost 60 years Herb Caen was THE voice of San Francisco, writing about his beloved city for the San Francisco Chronicle. This book takes you through some of his best writing.