Writer-historian Rebecca Solnit and photographer Susan Schwartzenberg survey San Francisco's transformation-skyrocketing rents that are driving out artists, activists, nonprofit organizations and the poor; the homogenization of the city's architecture, industries and population; the decay of its public life; and the erasure of its sites of civic memory

Reporting from the front lines of gentrification in San Francisco, Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg sound a warning bell to all urban residents. Wealth is just as capable of ravaging cities as poverty.

"Schwartzenberg's images survey more than thirty years of upheaval in the name of 'urban renewal,' and Solnit's text brings urgency to the question of whether a place in which artists, activists, and members of diverse races and classes can no longer afford to live is fated to become 'a city of presentation without creation.'" - New Yorker

"Passionate, potent, and to the point, Solnit's polemic embodies American political and social writing at its best." - Publishers Weekly