Berkeley Book, "Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats"

While the City of Berkeley, California, is widely known as the home of remarkable individuals - from cutting-edge entrepreneurs and Nobel Prize winners to visionary social critics and hippie clowns - the story of its iconoclassic culture begins for many with the historic social movements of the 1960's. In "Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley", author Richard Schwartz reveals that legendary personalities have been at the center of Berkeley life since its founding. Focusing on the period from 1850 to 1925, Schwartz brings to life Berkeley's defining men and women - squaters and speculators; missionaries and mystics; vendors, inventors, and industrialists. The result is not only an authoritative history that gives meaning to the streets of Berkeley we walk today, but also a delightful storyteller's anthology, full of humor, drama, sadness, and hard-earned wisdom.