Hedgehog in the Fog

Seriously. Who wears shorts in this weather?Being from San Francisco, I was clearly most interested in what the California guidebook had to say. Man, was it dense! I was very impressed with the level of research that had gone into it, and the immense amount of detail. It had an extensive history of the state, the names of places, important figures and moments in time. There were several state maps at the beginning, showing the roads and the geography of the area. But I particularly enjoyed the discussions of the flora and fauna, and of the weather.

More modern guidebooks not only condense their coverage of history and terrain, they often leave out really important facts. Or so I assume. How else to explain why tourists show up every year to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge in shorts and t-shirts, freezing their butts off while those of us who live in San Francisco shake our heads in our wool coats and tights? The WPA guide very clearly states that fall is much warmer than summer, where there is icy cold fog sticking its fingers down your shirt all the time and the sun comes out maybe seven times in three months. In fact, the guide details the weather year-round for each part of the state.

There are lovely descriptions of the nature in each area too, and since I feel like that is a big part of the draw of California it was nice to see. Overall, though it read a bit more like a textbook summary than a guide, I felt it had many interesting details about the state, and was full of useful information for the traveler as well as the historian, the naturalist, and the social psychologist.

I also appreciated that the guidebooks were written in such a way that assumed a certain level of education of the reader—beyond simply being literate. Each section was full of literary and cultural references that gave the text authority and dimension. However, it did not feel inaccessible either; the writing did not condescend to the reader with overly simplistic explanations, but it did not alienate the same audience by making these allusions unnecessarily complex or opaque. Each quote or reference was contextualized and incorporated in such a way that it was not necessary to have read the book to appreciate the way that the guidebook’s writers were using the words of writers before them who had written about California with a different intent.