E duardo C ontreras . Latinos and the Liberal City

In this fine book, Latinos and the Liberal City: Politics and Protest in San Francisco, historian Eduardo Contreras scrutinizes Latino/a history in San Francisco by examining the Latino/a contribution to the city’s political, social, and labor milieu. He does so by untangling a web of complicated and seemingly disjointed histories—from labor rights to the War on Poverty, from LGBTQIA+ rights to progressive labor activism, from feminism and the sexual revolution to multiethnic coalition building and neighborhood politics. Of course, those histories are all intimately connected, something Contreras stresses throughout the book. What emerges in Latinos and the Liberal City is a deeply nuanced account of how Latino/a peoples addressed the multiple challenges they faced as residents of the quintessential liberal city from the early twentieth century to the present day. Contreras begins with a useful introduction that explains many of the key terms in the book. His discussion of...

Democracy · Political economy · Political machine · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society