Monday, October 1, 2007

A bit of self-promotion


Today marks the official release date of my new book, Sacramento's Southside Park. It is part of the Arcadia Publishing "Images of America" series, like my earlier book Sacramento's Streetcars.

A link to Arcadia's page on the book

This book represents a very different approach from the streetcar book, and, in my mind, something of a different approach than most of the Images of America series done on Sacramento neighborhoods.

While I made much use of sources like SAMCC and the Sacramento Room for this book, most of the information was gathered in a series of oral history interviews with neighborhood residents. I interviewed people from many walks of life, but mainly working people: people who worked in canneries and vegetable distribution, clerks and florists, truckers and bartenders. I tried to represent as clearly as I know how the incredible ethnic diversity of Southside Park, including its Mexican, Japanese, Portuguese and Italian neighborhoods. Many of the photos came from family collections rather than archives, although there are plenty of historic archive photographs.

The interviews and personal photos helped make this book more of an exploration of the lives of people in the neighborhood, rather than simply a collection of photos of buildings and unidentified people. While writing the book, I got a great sense of the level of civic pride and community that is present in Southside, and hopefully some of that comes through in the book's text.

I will also be doing a series of signings:
Thursday, October 4, 6:30 PM at Barnes & Noble, 1725 Arden Way, Sacramento
Saturday, October 6, 1:00 PM at Barnes & Noble, 6111 Sunrise Blvd, Citrus Heights
Sunday, October 28, 1:00 PM at The Avid Reader on Broadway and 16th (old Tower Books)

Finally, I will be on the KXJZ Radio program INSIGHT next Wednesday, October 10, at 2:00 PM:

http://www.capradio.org/programs/insight/

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey congratulations on the book. Sounds intriguing.

Jocelyn said...

Congrat William! I'll look for it.

Unknown said...

O.K. I've ordered from the publisher and I will took forward to reading it while riding the bus.

Jon Q. RT Driver said...

Borders was back ordered, so was Barnes & Noble.

I'll find it eventually, and since I am into instant gratification purchasing online is not an option.

I passed around your book about streetcars to my co-workers at Light Rail, it was a quick hit.

Thanks for the history lesson.

Anonymous said...

Will--
Southside Park !!! Early 90`s Spring/Summer down to T street park office in elmhearst with $20 bucks to get a noise permit ala insant punk show at Southside. Alligators productions--pass out the flyers and bring the cooler. The Greens were there but ignored and the police weren`t. Planning to get the book!!!--love jay