Here are some titles I’ve collected in my O. studies, in no particular order.

Nonfictions from The O:

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems
Van Jones

American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Post-War Oakland
Robert O. Self

No There There: Race, Class and Political Community in Oakland
Chris Rhomberg

Oakland: A Photographic Journey
Bill Caldwell

Oakland’s Neighborhoods
Compiled by Erika Mailman

Key System Streetcars: Transit, Real Estate, and the Growth of the East Bay
Vernon J. Sappers (streetcar conductor and lifetime archivist)

The Rice Room
Ben Fong Torres

Lying Down with Lions
Ron Dellums

Temescal Legacies
Jeff Norman

Blues City
Ishmael Reed

Homegirls in the Public Sphere
Marie “Keta” Miranda

Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America
Aihwa Ong

Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California
Frances Dinkelspiel

In Search of Common Ground: Conversations with Erik Erikson and Huey P. Newton
Into. by Kai T. Erikson

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story
Elaine Brown

In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives On a Revolutionary Movement
Eds. Jama Laerow and Yohuru Williams

Fight or Be Slaves: The History of the Oakland-East Bay Labor Movement
Albert Vetere Lannon

Oakland: A History
Grant D. Miller

Oakland: The Story of a City
Beth Bagwell

No Mentor but Myself: Jack London on Writing and Writers
Eds. Dale L. Walker and Jeanne Campbell Reesman

Oakland’s Chinatown
William Wong

Oakland Fire Department
Captain Geoffrey Hunter

The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II
Marilynn S. Johnson

Oakland: The Soul of a City Nextdoor
Serena Bartlett

The Spirit of Oakand
Ed. Abby Wasserman, Photo Ed. Dianne Curry

Oakland’s Image: A History of Oakland, California
Lois Rather

Fictions set in Oakland, CA:

More Like Wrestling
Danyel Smith

Oaktown Devil
Renay Jackson

The Last King
Nichelle D. Tramble

Six Out Seven
Jess Mowry

Leaving
Richard Dry

Urban Studies and City Guides:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs

A City in History
Lewis Mumford

California: A Study of American Character
Josiah Royce

Where I Was From
Joan Didion

Inlandia: A Literary Journey through California’s Inland Empire
Ed. Gayle Wattawa

City of Quartz
Mike Davis

The Geography of Nowhere
James Howard Kunstler

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and
Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Rebbeca Solnit

Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing in College and Community
Linda Flower

A Dictionary of Cork Slang
Sean Beecher

New York
Gay Talese

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
William Cronon

The Business of Memory
Ed. Charles Baxter, with an essay on “El Camino Real” by James A. McPherson

Crowds and Power
Elias Canetti

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
Kenneth Johnson

The Evolution of American Urban Society, 6th Ed.
Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. Smith

Major Problems in American Urban and Suburban History, 2nd Ed.
Howard P. Chudacoff and Peter C. Baldwin

City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Victorian London
Judith R. Walkowitz

London Labour and the London Poor
Henry Mayhew

Oakland: Postcard History Series
Annalee Allen

Utopian and Dystopian Novels:

The Utopia Reader
Eds. Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent

Utopia
Thomas More

Paradise
Toni Morrison

The Homewood Books
John Edgar Wideman

Jitney
August Wilson

The Parable series
Octavia E. Butler

Women of Brewster Place, and
Linden Hills
Gloria Naylor

In America
Susan Sontag

Dubliners
James Joyce

The Dispossessed
Ursula K. LeGuin

The Colossus New York
Colson Whitehead

City Zines:

Oakslander Lakeside Gazette, Vols. I and II
Oaklandish.org

Instant City: A Literary Exploration of San Francisco
Eds. Gravity Goldberg and Eric Zassenhaus

…with more titles to come