Recent Posts

Exiting the Cul-de-Sac

The view from my back window in September… I’m just back from a long week in Guadalajara….

While reading and writing history I never stop thinking about radical social change. And I am continually frustrated with my own isolation, which arises from my critical dissatisfaction with what passes for the Left, whether of […]

Contesting the History of Early American California

South Park, George Gordon’s original real estate development, c. 1862.

The heroic histories of early California have been fed to the state’s schoolchildren, and to the larger culture, since the first wave of American historians began to churn out the self-aggrandizing tales that were meant to exalt the first settlers while painting a […]

Left Turn Only for San Francisco

How do we break free of the daily trauma and stupidity of contemporary politics? How do we go beyond the arduous defensive struggles that keep so many preoccupied with police violence, racist abuses, toxic masculinity, and the grinding poverty that is slowly consuming more and more of our neighbors?

Fairness has all but vanished. And […]