“Berglund’s accomplishment goes well beyond a forceful and entertaining narrative of late 19th-century San Francisco. It is a deeply textured analysis of urban disorder and order, amusement and prejudice, locality and nation-making. While other authors have treated San Francisco’s social and cultural categories in the abstract, Berglund’s book sets these forces in motion and shows their embodiment in real lives and venues. This book is at once about a city and a nation—both entities in the throes of forming imperial identities.”