Through personal papers and over forty oral histories, I recovered the seldom-reported, street-level interactions between police officers and San Francisco residents during the 1950s and 60s. My first book, The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972 (University of Chicago Press, 2014), revealed the central role policing played in the creation of San Francisco's modern liberal politics. I am a Distinguished Lecturer with the Organization of American Historians. I teach courses in the history of crime and policing, the history of the American West, urban history, and modern American history. My research focuses on twentieth-century American history, with particular focuses on political history, urban history, social and cultural movements, gender history, and oral history.
