Reclaiming San Francisco includes historians, geographers, poets, novelists, artists, art historians, photographers, journalists, citizen activists, an architect, and an anthropologist. Passionate about the city, they want San Francisco to be more San Francisco and less like the city of office towers, chain stores, theme parks, and privatized public services and property that appears to be its immediate fate. In this book, "reclaiming" is a synonym for both restoration and criticism.

San Francisco is not alone in being transformed according to the dictates of the global economy. But San Franciscans are unusual in their readiness to confront the corporate agenda for their city.

"A breathtaking ride through a dozen different cities called San Francisco." - Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear

"Having read this kaleidoscopic investigation of the great Pacific metropolis, I stand in awe of its raw energy, but fear, simultaneously, its dispersion into affluence and make-believe. The radical energy that animated San Francisco is pulsing in these pages, as does dismay at its murder by greed and promotion." - Andrei Codrescu, author of The Dog with the Chip in His Neck and NPR commentator

"A wonderful tour through the City's history and cultural life." - Chester Hartman, author of The Transformation of San Francisco

"This book celebrates the fact that we live in the most glorious of all human creations, a city, with living streets, more like ancient Athens or Samarkhand or Calcutta than like the aggregate office block/ parking lot/ shopping malls that once were modern American cities and still bear their names. Read it to understand why San Francisco is still alive--and how we have to defend it." - Joan Holden, San Francisco Mime Troupe

James Brook is a poet and the principal editor of Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information (City Lights) and the translator of many works, including My Tired Father by Gellu Naum and Panegyric by Guy Debord

Chris Carlsson, former editor of Processed World and Bad Attitude, is the producer of Shaping San Francisco, a multimedia, digital companion to this book. See www.shapingsf.org for more information.

Nancy J. Peters is the copublisher of City Lights Books.