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A local rock star once said, "San Francisco is forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality." No American city has such a broad sweep of staggering views - of the ocean, of a huge bay, of surrounding hills - or such a high opinion of its own worth. San Francisco has always been rich, too; the city's great wealth has long underwritten the broadmindedness so vital to its charm. But there is much more to the City by the Bay than money and rarefied air, and, in San Francisco, Michael Johns intimately portrays the history and surprisingly complex sensibilities that give this small city its outsized personality. Johns explores how, despite its sophistication, San Francisco retains a frontier quality that has always attracted seekers - of fortune, power, pleasure, refuge, rebellion.