Golden Gate

Golden Gate is a short (200 page) history of the Golden Gate bridge. Much of the book is devoted to the "prehistory" of the bridge. (The bridge does not get constructed until well past the halfway point of the book.) The language is flowery in an attempt to mask the lack of content. Cut through the fluff and you could have a nice "long article". I was also disappointed with the coverage of the construction - one short chapter, and bang, the bridge is done. The historical narrative of the book also ends here, with the remainder consisting of isolated chapters on city, suicide and art related to the bridge.

The one interesting tidbit from the book concerned the bridge's color. There was some debate over the color to be used (among those advocated were stripes and grey) While this debate was going, the bridge was primed with "safety orange" to help preserve the work in progress. People liked the look more than they liked the "opponents" color scheme, and eventually it became the bridge's iconic color.