4.5 Stars

This book covers San Francisco, California and United States history from the time that Moscone was born through his murder in the late 70s. It highlights Moscone's experience and how those various forces shaped his time as mayor, but also does a really great job telling stories about the culture, politics and public sentiments of the city and country throughout that time.

I grew up in San Francisco and have read a _lot_ about the city's history. I belong to a club that has a full wall of California history books and even went to Convent of the Sacred Heart, which Mitchell references more than 10 times in this book.

Even so, I learned a lot of details about the city during these years that were brand new to me. Examples include--details about the SF Giants and their issues with the city in the 70s, the history of district representation in SF (I knew it was a thing that had gone back and forth but it was great to learn how it all came together), and the history of the Moscone Conference center (obviously not yet named for the Mayor during the time of this book.) He also did a great job contextualizing some of the issues I was more aware of, like urban renewal and freeway results in the larger world, especially compared with what was happening in NYC and connected them adeptly to voter sentiment and SF politics at the time.

I had accidentally downloaded this document as a PDF onto my tiniest e-reader, but not onto anything larger before it expired, which meant that I couldn't control text size and it was not ergonomic or great for my eyes to read this book. Even so, I found myself wanting to read one more section before bed, because I was never sure what I was going to learn next.

If this topic is interesting to you, this is a good one. I learned a lot of different things from what I got from Season of the Witch and Gary Kamiya's books (though they are also good.) I found that the way that this author framed the issues really worked for me, and the stories he told about the people helped me get a better picture of who was who.

It was a bit repeatative at times, which is why we aren't going with a full 5 stars.

Thank you to University of Nevada Press for an advance reading copy for unbiased review.

I admittedly did not know very much about Mayor Moscone except for the fact that his and Supervisor Harvey Milk’s assassinations were horrible tragedies that still reverberates today in San Francisco’s politics. But I was really not expecting that Moscone was so ahead of his time and the positive effects of his legacy from when he was alive.

Intersecting Moscone’s life with the history and politics of the burgeoning modern San Francisco, the author weaves an interesting story about this progressive superstar who helped champion many causes in his political career that were not as popular as they are now such as gay rights, diversifying the government, and marijuana decriminalization. A good portion of the books is painting the election that Moscone won as one that was incredibly transformative for the city. It ends by showing his role in the future of progressive politics.

I do always feel an aversion to biographies because they very often can veer into hagiography BUT I do feel like it was able to address Moscone’s shortcomings, political and otherwise, such as his connections to the People’s Temple.

Ultimately, this was a really good biography about a mayor that to most people may seem like an afterthought. It’s definitely the premiere source on Moscone.