A People's History of SFO

"Inside the airport, you can’t literally see the past. Still, you might be able to commune with it when you read Eric Porter’s new lively book." * San Francisco Examiner *
"Starting his history with the indigenous peoples and concluding with the airport’s impact on the environment in the twenty-first century Bay Area, Porter offers a history of the San Francisco airport deeply rooted in place and the iterative history of the Bay Area and its largest air transportation facility." * Pacific Historical Review *
"This innovative, engaging book illuminates the extent to which a major urban airport can inform a spectrum of topics, in this case business promotion, labor relations, race relations, and environmental challenges. . . . The text offers a wealth of material on how important a large airport can be beyond serving as just a transportation hub." * CHOICE *
"A People’s History of SFO recounts a series of stories on how San Francisco’s airport was part and parcel of a twentieth-century culture in the Bay Area that promulgated systemic racism, fostered homophobic policies, distributed economic and artistic resources unequally, and adopted environmental remediation only when forced." * California History *
"Airports are physical manifestations of the complexities inherent in the field of urban planning. In his book A People’s History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport, Eric Porter masterfully occupies this space. The book takes the reader through a century of history surrounding the development of the San Francisco International Airport by weaving together the history of infrastructure, movement, and technology with immigration, racism, and environmental impacts and justice." * Journal of the American Planning Association *