Block 36: Life in a West Berkeley Neighborhood 1900-1950, by Jacqueline Barber

Published by Berkeley Historical Society in October 2026. By diving deeply into what life was like for the inhabitants of a single block, this book provides insight into how the social and political context of the times played out with everyday people right there on that block. The prevalence of child labor; the anti-Chinese movement; the time before any social safety net existed; the ravages of uncontrolled diseases; defined sex roles; the impact of world wars, Japanese internment camps, and the Great Migration—all this and more is manifest in the lives of those who lived on Block 36 over the first half of the 20th century.