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    Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love
    Unavailable
    Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love
    Unavailable
    Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love
    Audiobook16 hours

    Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love

    Written by David Talbot

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Season of the Witch is the first audiobook to fully capture the dark magic of San Francisco in this breathtaking period, when the city radically changed itself-and then revolutionized the world. The cool gray city of love was the epicenter of the 1960s cultural revolution. But by the early 1970s, San Francisco's ecstatic experiment came crashing down from its starry heights. The city was rocked by savage murder sprees, mysterious terror campaigns, political assassinations, street riots, and finally a terrifying sexual epidemic. No other city endured so many calamities in such a short time span.

    David Talbot takes us deep into the riveting story of his city's ascent, decline, and heroic recovery. He draws intimate portraits of San Francisco's legendary demons and saviors: Charles Manson, Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Bill Graham, Herb Caen, the Cockettes, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Joe Montana and the Super Bowl 49ers. He reveals how the city emerged from the trials of this period with a new brand of "San Francisco values," including gay marriage, medical marijuana, immigration sanctuary, universal health care, recycling, renewable energy, consumer safety, and a living wage mandate. Considered radical when they were first introduced, these ideas have become the bedrock of decent society in many parts of the country, and exemplify the ways that the city now inspires us toward a live-and-let-live tolerance, a shared sense of humanity, and an openness to change.

    As a new generation of activists and dreamers seeks its own path to a more enlightened future, Season of the Witch-with its epic tale of the wild and bloody birth of San Francisco values-offers both inspiration and cautionary wisdom.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 8, 2012
    ISBN9781469204109
    Author

    David Talbot

    David Talbot is the esteemed author of four popular history books, and the founder and original editor in chief of one of the first entirely digital publications, Salon magazine. A former senior editor of Mother Jones magazine, Talbot is a journalist and columnist who has written for the New Yorker, Time, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. His book Season of the Witch was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller for four years and was the 2015 San Francisco One City One Book pick.

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    Reviews for Season of the Witch

    4.5/5

    97 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A great overview of the events and people that shaped San Francisco in the 1960's and 1970's! Everyone and everything is in here, including Janis Joplin, The Dead, Moby Grape, Dan White, Harvey Milk, the Cockettes, the Zebra murders, and on and on and on. I felt like the book was very engaging, and it only lost my attention when it, in my opinion, overplayed the importance of the Forty Niners to the city's rebounding. But overall, a must read if you've left your heart in The City!
    • 5/5
      No one could have read this amazing vast deep study of my beloved home town better than Arthur Morrie. What a brilliant book. Brilliantly read.
    • 5/5
      Everything Talbot has written is a joy to read/listen to. This too, is an excellent effort.
    • 5/5
      Talbot’s well written and insightful book provides an entertaining and enlightening look at the recent history of the city of San Francisco. From the 1950s and 1960s, when the city began to shape its identity as a haven for iconoclasts and “alternative” types through the turbulence of the 1970s to the both admirable and regrettable developments of the end of the twentieth century, Talbot’s critical eye reports on the good, the bad, and the very ugly.Although the author eschews the temptation to romanticize San Francisco’s multidimensional history, he acknowledges all the best that the city has to offer as he portrays the struggles and hardships that many readers might not be aware of—for example, the racial divide that vexed the city for much of the 1970s and the uneasy political partnerships that existed between venerable liberal figures like Mayor George Moscone, Harvey Milk, and the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones’ suicide cult, which once held an eerie degree of political power in the city.Talbot devotes large sections of the book to the SLA and its abduction of Patty Hearst, San Francisco’s evolution as the gay capital of the US (if not the world), the strange ordeal of the Peoples Temple, Dan White’s assassination of Moscone and Milk, Dianne Feinstein’s political ascension, and other bits of history both profound (the Zebra murders) and uplifting (the 49ers’ triumph as NFL champions).Overall, a compelling examination of the city of San Francisco, and a must-read for anyone who lives there or who has ever been curious about the city’s unique appeal.
    • 5/5
      We lived it and we’re still here. A fascinating history of a city torn by violence and plague that somehow comes out of it all stronger. San Francisco’s story from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, this book delves into the darker corners of our collective psyche. Though I was here for it, this book puts it all together and provides details I was unaware of prior to reading it. From the rise of a unique musical scene to the glimmerings of an insidious disease that would decimate the population, this is a chronicle that matters.
    • 4/5
      This was informative but equally entertaining. Moved through history at a pace that gave every topic fair coverage and established a sense of momentum that made it difficult for me to put this book down.
    • 5/5
      I was not born until the late 60's but I somehow feel connected and very curious about what was happening when I was an infant. I also feel I should have been there! By reading this chronicle of the Summer of love and other happenings in San Francisco, I felt the Authors love of the city and the times. I couldnt put it down, well organized and I also found myself looking up people, articles, newspapers, etc. Great book!
    • 4/5
      This book details the heavily interwoven story of how San Francisco became the national beacon of liberalism and the tremendous costs that the city endured along the way, in an attempt to maintain it's lofty idealism.Beginning with the incredibly interesting career of attorney/activist Vince Hallinan, Talbot traces the emergence of liberalism in San Francisco as staid forces like Catholic church and the local political establishment provided continual road blocks at every turn.Talbot's book passes through the Summer of Love and sheds light upon, in great detail, the amazing confluence of events that occurred in 1970's San Francisco: The Zodiac Killer, The SLA/Patty Hearst kidnapping, Jim Jones and People's Temple, Dan White and the murder of Harvey Milk.Throughout these horrific events, not only does the interconnectedness of the San Francisco criminal underground, cultural and artistic communities, community organizers, and local politicians become apparent, but their collective ability to regroup and rise above, in San Francisco's own unique way is a recurring theme.Anyone remotely interested in 60's popular culture, gay and lesbian culture, radical politics, true crime, or (tangentially) sports, will find some interesting anecdotes to savor here.