Jonathan Weber discusses his new book "City on the Edge"

This event is FREE to attend. Seating is first-come, first-served. (RSVPs are optional, but encouraged for our planning purposes.)

Meet the author, find out about a terrific new book, ask questions, hear directly from the author, and get personalized signed books!

Jonathan Weber will be joining Bookshop West Portal on July 7th to discuss his new book, City on the Edge, a deeply thought-out examination of San Francisco's soul over the past few decades. As San Francisco Standards' former Editor in Chief, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and as someone who lived in SF through years of such monumental change, Weber offers a unique perspective on our city.

You don't need to have read the book beforehand to enjoy the event, but we do recommend reserving your copy ahead of time:

About the Book:

The definitive and "captivating" (Marty Baron, author of Collision of Power) story of San Francisco's meteoric transformation into a global capital of technology, and how the same creative and political forces that gave rise to its boom nearly engineered its collapse.

At the dawn of the 1990s, San Francisco was a beautiful if troubled mid-sized metropolis. It was still reeling from the AIDS epidemic and the Lome Prieta earthquake, its economy stuck in a post-industrial slump. Once considered to be the capital of the American West, and later the beating heart of the global counterculture, the mythic, fog-shrouded city at the edge of the continent faced an uncertain future.

But in that very moment, a band of free-thinking technologists, immersed in the creative zeitgeist of the city, were inventing the contemporary internet. San Francisco would undergo an epic political, social, and economic transformation as it claimed the title of tech capital of the world. Local politicians, including Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, advanced to the national stage. An unlikely marriage of underground culture and technological optimism gave rise to the annual reverie known as Burning Man.

This should have been a happy story for San Francisco. But as the city's tech economy roared, a host of urban ills lurked in the shadows: homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, and a crippling lack of new housing. The city's famous left-wing political establishment struggled to get its arms around the problems, becoming a punching bag for President Trump and the new right. When the pandemic arrived in 2020, it created new crises and laid old ones bare, shattering a "City Family" that had ruled politically for more than thirty years and prompting a sharp rightward turn by the once-liberal tech industry.

Jonathan Weber saw it all up close as a reporter and newsroom leader. He offers a sweeping history of a city that rose to dizzying heights, only to be undone by the heedlessness of a tech industry it did so much to spawn and politicians who had lost the plot. Drawing on 200 interviews with mayors, CEOs, political leaders, activists, entrepreneurs, and artists, City on the Edge is more than a simple chronicle of a city. It's the story of a war waged for the heart of San Francisco--one that anticipated the culture wars raging around the world. Its outcome would have an impact far beyond the city's famed Golden Gates.

About the Author:

Jonathan Weber was named the Los Angeles Times's first-ever Silicon Valley reporter in 1990. He was later editor in chief of The Industry Standard, a chronicle of and bellwether for the first dot-com boom, and oversaw West Coast news and global technology coverage for Reuters. He was most recently the editor in chief of The San Francisco Standard.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

BookShop West Portal, 80 West Portal Avenue, San Francisco, United States

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