When British explorer George Vancouver arrived at the San Francisco presidio in 1792, he described it as resembling a “compound for cattle”—hardly the opulent outpost he had expected of Spanish California. Today San Francisco is a bustling metropolis with picturesque neighborhoods, dramatic engineering feats such as the Golden Gate Bridge, and innovative tech companies. How did we get here? To answer that question, A Short History of San Francisco moves from the first Ohlone settlements to the Spanish missions and Gold Rush mansions, to the glaring inequalities of the Gilded Age and the turbulent labor politics of the early and mid-twentieth century, to the birth of the counterculture and the rise of the tech companies that now define the region. Concise yet packed with information, this book is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the city at the Golden Gate.
 

Robert W. Cherny is professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University. He has written extensively on the history of San Francisco, including, most recently, The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco. He is also coauthor with William Issel of San Francisco, 1865–1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer at Moscow State University, Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Melbourne, and Senior Fulbright Scholar at Heidelberg University. He served for five years on San Francisco’s Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board and continues to be actively involved in historic preservation activities in the city.