Robert W. Cherny

A Short History of San Francisco by Robert W. Cherny was an enjoyable introduction to a city I thought I knew much better than I actually did. Living near San Francisco, I was familiar with the landmarks, neighborhoods, and general history, but this book filled in many of the details that often get overlooked.

Cherny does an excellent job of giving the reader enough information to understand the city's development without becoming overwhelming. Rather than feeling like a dense academic show more history, the book feels like an invitation to learn more. I frequently found myself wanting to take the book into San Francisco and walk around the city with it in hand, looking at familiar places through a new lens.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the book was learning the stories behind things I had previously taken for granted. Streets, neighborhoods, and odd features of the city suddenly had explanations. It was fascinating to discover who certain streets were named after, or why New Montgomery Street only extends for a couple of blocks. The city began to feel less like a collection of buildings and roads and more like a series of decisions made by generations of people.

This is not an exhaustive history of San Francisco, nor is it intended to be. Instead, it provides a solid overview that sparks curiosity and encourages further exploration. For readers interested in the history of San Francisco, especially locals who want to understand the city around them a little better, this is an excellent place to start. show less

This is a briskly written introduction to San Francisco city history. Although a bit brief, the author packs a lot of detail into it - plus from what I understand he's written other books on the city's history, so there are probably plenty of longer books on this subject for people who want more of it. There's a bit of everything here - descriptions of pre-European Native people, the small-scale invasion by Spanish colonizers, one of my favorite weirdos of American history in the person of show more Russian Count Nikolai Rezanov and California during the Civil War through to Haight-Ashbury, the AIDS crisis and COVID. The author doesn't shy away from pointing out the history of racism and bigotry in San Francisco or California in general, which includes a description of the change in perception of the Spanish mission system. In previous decades in California (such as the public school system teaching state history) the mission system was at least somewhat seen as a generally noble mission that may have fallen short in some aspects, whereas the newer consensus is much closer to the reality of them being something like culture-obliterating concentration camps little better than Southern plantations, just ones run by Catholic priests instead of rich laymen.

At the same time I would hardly put this book in the domain of lefty literature - Malcolm Harris' book on Palo Alto is a good example of something I would consider substantially more lefty than this. For one thing, the author mostly avoids the tech boom as a subject and thereby omits anything inflicted on San Francisco by Silicon Valley tech oligarchs, or any local response specifically to those oligarchs.

Still, even though this isn't Malcolm Harris' book or (probably, since I still have to read it) Mike Davis' City of Quartz about Los Angeles, this is a readable and reasonably sized look at the history of San Francisco. show less

Robert W. Cherny's passion for San Francisco shines through every page of this book, and it shows. This is clearly a labor of love, and that comes across whether he's covering the big sweep of history or zooming in on the detail that brings a neighborhood to life.
That's what makes it stand out. Cherny has a gift for making history feel personal and immediate. Take this description of the Inner Sunset:
"My neighborhood is like a village, centered on its locally owned businesses around the show more intersection of 9th Avenue and Irving Street. Built up in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth, the Inner Sunset is a mix of single-family houses, two- or three-story flats, and apartment buildings on many corners."
You can picture it instantly. That warmth and specificity runs through the whole book — whether you're a San Francisco native, a visitor, or just someone who loves a well-told local history, this delivers. Highly recommended. show less

Robert W. Cherny's A Short History of San Francisco takes the reader from the very first humans to set foot in what is now San Francisco to the present day. He dips into the various eras, giving us a taste of the city's evolution and how each version of the city can still be seen. As someone who hasn't spent much time there, this book made me want to explore all of San Francisco's nooks and crannies. My one quibble is that it was too short - I would have liked to read more about the show more transitions from one era to the next and about the flavors of the different neighborhoods. All in all, this was a satisfying read that will pique the curiosity of locals and tourists. show less