The Cable Car Book — San Francisco, Bonanza 1983

📖 The Cable Car Book by Charles A. Smallwood, Warren Edward Miller & Don DeNevi (Bonanza Books 1983) — a photographic history of San Francisco’s cable car system, pairing more than 150 historical photographs with technical detail on the lines, cars, gripmen, and signal booths that defined an era. This copy is Very Good in a Good+ dust jacket.

QUICK FACTS

• Title: The Cable Car Book
• Authors: Charles A. Smallwood (b. 1912), Warren Edward Miller (b. 1924), Don DeNevi (b. 1937)
• Publisher: Bonanza Books, distributed by Crown Publishers — issued by arrangement with Celestial Arts
• Year: 1983 edition (Copyright © 1983)
• Format: Hardcover in dust jacket; includes index
• ISBN: 0-517-40878-3
• Condition: Book Very Good / Jacket Good+ — full report below

THE STORY

The Cable Car Book is a nostalgic and technical tribute to San Francisco’s cable car system. Working from archival photographs, the authors trace both the engineering of the network — the moving cable, gripmen, and tiny signal booths that still control right-of-way at intersections like California & Powell — and the social history of the streets it ran on. Captions name specific lines and scenes: a California Street Cable Railroad car and powerhouse prior to 1891, a double-decker car climbing a cobblestone street, and the Presidio & Ferries Railroad Company (the Union Street line) in 1891.

THIS EDITION

This copy is the 1983 Bonanza Books hardcover edition, published by arrangement with Celestial Arts of Berkeley, which issued the original work. The copyright page reads “Copyright © 1983 by Charles Smallwood, Warren Edward Miller and Don DeNevi,” credits cover design to Linda Herman and book design to Abigail Johnson, and notes it was manufactured in the United States. Library of Congress data classifies it under Railroads, Cable — United States — History (Dewey 625.5), and the volume includes an index.

COVER ART & ILLUSTRATIONS

The front cover is dark brown with a large black-and-white vintage photograph of a cable car parked before a building lettered “CALIFORNIA BOULEVARD,” the title set in white letters with a gold outline and framed by two gold banners, with the three authors’ names below. The interior is filled with high-contrast historical photographs: the Fairmont Hotel and the signal booth at California & Powell (p. 61), a packed double-decker car on a cobblestone street (p. 49), and the Presidio & Ferries Railroad Company car of 1891 (p. 37). The back cover carries drawings by Stephen W. Potter, and diagrams on pages 19, 21, and 22 are reproduced with permission from the San Francisco Cable Car Museum / Pacific Coast Chapter, Railway & Locomotive History Society.

WHY IT MATTERS

• A dense photographic record of San Francisco’s cable car era — one of the few cities where the system still operates today.
• Balances technical detail (cable, gripmen, signal control) with street-level social history, making it useful to both railfans and local-history readers.
• Includes an index and Library of Congress cataloging data, so it reads as a reference volume rather than a coffee-table filler.

FREQUENTLY ASKED

What edition is this? The 1983 Bonanza Books hardcover edition (by arrangement with Celestial Arts), ISBN 0-517-40878-3.

Is it signed or inscribed? No signature or inscription noted; the condition report lists no writing in the text block.

What condition is it in? Book Very Good, dust jacket Good+ — full report below.

FOR COLLECTORS

A complete Bonanza edition with a bright (if repaired) dust jacket and clean, unfoxed pages — a solid reference for transit-history and San Francisco collections.

Condition Report

• Overall Grade: Book: Very Good (VG); Jacket: Good+ (G+)
• Cover & Spine: Boards are clean and sharp with minimal shelf wear. Some discoloration to the cloth on the the spine at the head and tail corners.
• Dust Jacket: Bright, not sunned or tanned. Several closed tears of various sizes, one on the lower edge of the front cover is taped on the inside. Price clipped.
• Text Block & Pages: Clean, white, and crisp. No foxing or tanning present.
• Binding: Tight, square, solid hinges; no loose, torn or folded pages, no writing.

See accompanying images for full condition details. Will ship promptly, carefully packaged.

HFB-SEO-v1: 2026-09-08

1 in stock