Welcome to Gray Brechin’s official website
Dr. Gray Brechin is an historical geographer, a frequent radio and television guest, and a popular public speaker. He is currently a visiting scholar in the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography and founder and project scholar of California's Living New Deal Project.
In the News
Chasing Bay Area artifacts of the New Deal
By John King, San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 2008
Articles & Publications
Read Gray’s articles from publications including Antipode, The New York Times, and Focus.
Recent POSTS:
The Guttering Promise of Public Education
U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography Commencement Address, May 16, 2009
Recent articles on the Web:
New Deal Civil Works Project Remembered in Berkeley
The Berkeley Daily Planet, February 11, 2009
Two Views of the New Deal: The Pitfall of Low Expectations
San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 2008
News Analysis: Public Relations (Again) Trumps Public Safety at UC Berkeley
The Berkeley Daily Planet, October 16, 2008
Excavating The Buried Civilization of Roosevelt’s New Deal
Newgeography.com, August 13, 2008
Forgotten Foundation: The New Deal for Bay Area Parks
Bay Nature, January-March 2008
Books
Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999
» Buy now at UC Press
Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream
with photographer Robert Dawson
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999
» Buy now at UC Press
In addition to numerous articles, Gray Brechin has published two books taking on the fragile and contentious relationship between the Western United States as an earthly paradise and the settlers who came to inhabit these places. More books…
Upcoming Speaking Appearances
To be announced. View past appearances…
California’s Living New Deal Project
The Living New Deal Project is an unprecedented and growing collaborative effort to identify, map, and interpret 
the vast public works legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal in California, as well as to demonstrate how other states and municipalities can do the same. With generous seed funding from the Columbia Foundation andothers, the California Historical Society has partnered with U.C. Berkeley's Institute for Research in Labor and Employment Library and the California Studies Center to engage Californians in a collective act of rediscovery not only of vital physical remains but of timeless issues of civics in a living democracy.
Teaching
Dr. Brechin has taught since 1986 at numerous institutions, including U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Mills College, California College of Arts and Crafts, and University of California Extension. See all teaching work…