Family background and childhood in Florida and California; work experiences during Depression; wartime service for Lockheed Aircraft; Sonoma years, 1947-1958: working as carpenter, local cooking culture, California cooking traditions, travel to Europe and exposure to French cookware, opening of Williams-Sonoma; relocation of store to San Francisco; clientele, merchandising; American interest in French cooking during 1950s and 1960s; changing conceptions of the kitchen; influence of various cooks and food writers on Williams; buying trips in France and Europe; mail-order merchandising, catalog production; 1970s attitudes about cooking and the good life; new food preparation technology; appeal of store to counterculture types; men and women as consumers; sale of the company to Howard Lester, 1978; expansion and diversification during the 1980s and 1990s: Gardener's Eden, Hold Everything, Pottery Barn, Chambers, multi-catalog marketing strategies; customer service, image of Williams-Sonoma, cookbooks, philosophy of cooking and hospitality. Includes interviews with three executives who played key roles in the company's expansion and diversification during the 1980s and 1990s: HOWARD LESTER, chief executive officer; PATRICK CONNOLLY, senior vice president of mail order and marketing; and TOM O'HIGGINS, vice president of merchandising.