Description
Book SynopsisWith exhaustive research and a storyteller’s flair, historian Sandra E. Bonura offers a sweeping narrative of one of the nation’s most important and unjustly forgotten industrialists. Bonura weaves a tale that is at once epic and intimate.—Charles Slack, award-winning author, journalist, and business editor
2021 San Diego Book Award
Empire Builder is the previously untold story of a pioneer who almost single-handedly transformed the bankrupt village of San Diego into a thriving city. When he first dropped anchor in San Diego Bay on a warm June day in 1887, John Diedrich Spreckels set into motion a series of events that later defined the city. Within just a few years, this son of the German immigrant Claus Spreckels, known as the “Sugar King,” owned and controlled the majority of San Diego’s industry by demanding advanced techniques of building construction, water supply management, and energy production, as w
Trade Review
“Fascinating. . . . Through one man’s life, we learn the more general history of how cities in this young country developed, a story of the ‘one-man town’ commonly played out across the American West. . . . The author has resurrected the Spreckels name from obscurity and established its place in San Diego history.”—Rowena Gray, California History
“With exhaustive research and a storyteller’s flair, historian Sandra E. Bonura offers a sweeping narrative of one of the nation’s most important and unjustly forgotten industrialists. Bonura weaves a tale that is at once epic and intimate.”—Charles Slack, award-winning author, journalist, and business editor
"An interesting bit of California history."—Kevin Winter, Manhattan Book Review
“Here is the definitive book on John D. Spreckels, a titan who came [to San Diego] and ended up seeming to own or control everything in town. To read Sandra Bonura’s biography of John D. Spreckels is to understand how many of the very foundations of America’s finest city came to be.”—Ken Kramer, creator and host of Ken Kramer’s About San Diego on KPBS-TV
“A sweetly told story of not only an important figure in San Diego and California history but a fractious family that helped give America its sweet tooth.”—Roland De Wolk, award-winning investigative journalist and author
“Sandra Bonura breaks new ground exploring John Spreckels’s escapades and incredible accomplishments across the Pacific. Bonura has a penchant for finding history’s obscured truths and retelling them vividly and honestly. Empire Builder’s story does not disappoint.”—Edgy Lee, award–winning documentary film writer and director
“Bonura takes a deep and satisfying dive into the history of one of the leading families of the West’s Gilded Age. The narrative is accompanied by fascinating narrative tangents.”—Leon Fink, distinguished author, historian, editor, and recognized expert on labor unions and immigration
“Through masterful research and clear writing, Sandra Bonura allows readers to more fully understand the motives and genius of J. D. Spreckels.”—Iris Engstrand, recognized authority on San Diego’s history
“Bonura expertly conveys the passion and drive of a man who invested his fortune and energy in building San Diego, a sometimes herculean task that earned him praise but also the enmity of those who resented his dominance.”—Theodore “Andy” Strathman, coeditor of the Journal of San Diego History
“Although best remembered as a transportation magnate, John D. Spreckels led in almost every aspect of a developing southwest region, including water and agriculture. This work is long overdue and should be a must-read for anyone with an interest in our history.”—Bruce Semelsberger, archivist and historian at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Uwe Spiekermann
Acknowledgments
Prologue: “It’s Hell for the ‘One Man’ in the One-Man Town”
1. Chasing the Sweet American Dream
2. Taking Hawai‘i by Storm
3. Crazed Land Boom and Bust
4. Sugar and Strife
5. Aloha Hawai‘i
6. Raising the Spreckels Clan
7. Roots in San Francisco
8. Building San Diego’s Infrastructure
9. Earthquake, Death, and Legal (and Romantic) Chaos
10. Influencing San Diego Politics
11. Coronado’s Uncle John
12. The So-Called Impossible Railroad
13. Building Up Broadway
14. John and the Wobblies
15. Gifting the Panama–California Exposition and the Zoo
16. Standing Up to the U.S. Government
17. The Cruel 1920s
18. The Departed Skipper
Epilogue: Breaking Up the Empire
Notes on Sources and Research
Notes
Bibliography
Index
