San Francisco: A Cultural History

Within a generation San Francisco grew from an isolated Mexican trading post with more hills than people into America's major Pacific coast city. Shaped by entrepreneurs, eccentrics, and visionaries, it became renowned for accommodating those who dared to be different.

Mick Sinclair explores gold-rush San Francisco and the early free-for-all that led to corruption, vigilantism, and public hangings. From the nineteenth-century mansions of Nob Hill and the Barbary Coast with its spiked drinks, he charts the 1950s San Francisco Poetry Renaissance that sired the Beat Generation. Through literature, music, and popular culture, he considers the rise of Berkeley's student activism, the genesis of hippie culture and Haight-Ashbury's legendary Summer of Love. Explaining how the Castro became the world's most famous gay neighborhood, he also reveals how a booming internet economy transformed and then threatened to destroy the city.

The City of Landmarks: the Golden Gate Bridge; the Transamerica Pyramid; the Ferry Building; Mission Dolores; City Hall, Coit Tower; Alcatraz Island; Yerba Buena Center.

The City of Psychedelia: Ken Kesey and the Acid Tests; the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane; the Trips Festival and the Human Be-In; underground culture and festivals.

The City of Writers: Ina Donna Coolbrith, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, George Sterling; Dashiel Hammett; Kenneth Rexroth; Allen Ginsberg; Herb Caen; Armistead Maupin.

About the Series

This series offers indepth cultural and historical guides to the great cities of the world. More than ordinary guidebooks, they introduce the visitor to each city's unique present day identity and its links with the past.