A Short History of San Francisco

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.

"Cherny excels at showing how San Francisco's diverse inhabitants shaped the city's history. Readers will appreciate the dry humor that appears from time to time like morning fog at Ocean Beach on a chilly day in July. The book is a very readable survey based on the author's forty-plus years of scholarship." -William Issel, author of Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in Twentieth-Century San Francisco "With its canny selection and emphasis, Cherny's book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of San Francisco. His control over the material is admirable, and his discussion is deft and enlightening." -Peter Richardson, author of No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead