Ben Macomber

Ben Macomber was an American writer born in 1876. The main work that can be confirmed from readily available library and public-domain records is The Jewel City (1915), a richly illustrated book about the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

The book explores the fair’s planning, buildings, sculpture, gardens, music, and symbolism, and it has remained accessible through major public-domain and library collections. Contemporary introductory material to the book says that much of its text first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggesting that Macomber wrote for newspaper readers as well as book audiences.

Very little biographical information about him is easy to verify from reliable online sources, so it is safest to remember him through the work itself: an enthusiastic, detailed portrait of one of the great American expositions of the early 1900s.