Michael Johns worked in San Francisco for a year as a bicycle messenger and fell in love with the city. Ten years later he began a professorship at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The City of Mexico in the Age of Diaz (1997), Moment of Grace: The American City in the 1950s (2003) and The Education of a Radical: An American Revolutionary in Sandinista Nicaragua (2012). He lives in San Francisco.
"""Johns' San Francisco: Instant City, Promised Land is a double winner. It's a first-rate short history of the city from the Gold Rush to the second Tech Invasion, and it's a smart, savvy, and refreshingly sane look at San Francisco today. Johns brings a rare combination of academic knowledge and journalistic engagement to his work. His nuanced observations make this book one of the best short takes on contemporary San Francisco.""--Gary Kamiya, author of ""Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco"" and executive editor of ""San Francisco Magazine"""