How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California

CBD Adult Education Presents… Conversations in Jewish Learning

November 17, 2009 Tuesday, 7:30 pm Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California Speaker: Author Frances Dinkelspiel   Isaias Hellman was California’s premier financier in the late 19th and early 20th century, a man who rose from peddling goods to the powerful presidency of Wells Fargo Bank. Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, a book by his great-great granddaughter Frances Dinkelspiel,  tells the remarkable story of Hellman’s rise, and the role he played in transforming California from a frontier economy driven by the barter of hides and the exchange of gold to one of the most dynamic economies in the nation. Starting in the days when Los Angeles was more Mexican pueblo than American city, and continuing through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and World War I, Towers of Gold features cameos by Collis Huntington, Henry Huntington, Edward Doheny, Edward Harriman, Meyer Lehman, and Levi Strauss, and paints a rich portrait of California’s Gilded Age.

About the Speaker: Frances Dinkelspiel is a fifth-generation Californian who grew up in San Francisco. A graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Frances spent more than 20 years working as a newspaper reporter. Her freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has also taught at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California is her first book. It was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and notable book of 2008 and was named by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association as a best book of 2009.

A donation of $3 for members and $5 for nonmembers is requested.