The Egg Man's Son

In his memoir, retired San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Kevin Mullen relates what it was like growing up Irish in World War II-era San Francisco, amid sensational reports that motorists were being shot on the Golden Gate Bridge for "signaling with their headlights to Japanese submarines." And when, to the childish imagination of him and his friends, the German lady on Collingwood Street harbored wanted Nazis in her apartment house at the top of the hill. He describes coming of age in the working-class atmosphere of pre-1960s San Francisco and participating in the tail end of the saloon culture that had previously predominated the "city that was." He was member of the San Francisco police department during the great changes that rocked the city-and the nation-in the 60s and beyond. He offers one insider's view of that most turbulent era, revealing insights and information about the contentious issues of those days which cannot be found among the stories of those who made the "revolution."