Surveys

• Barth, Gunther Paul (1975). Instant Cities: Urbanization and the Rise of San Francisco and Denver. Oxford University Press.
• Issel, William & Cherny, Robert W. (1986). San Francisco, 1865–1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development. University of California Press.
• Richards, Rand (2007). Historic San Francisco: A Concise History and Guide. ISBN 978-1879367050.
• Ryan, Mary P. (1997). Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520204417. Comparative survey of San Franciso, New York, and New Orleans.
• Solnit, Rebecca (2010). Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26250-8.; online review
• Starr, Kevin (1973). Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. Starr's multivolume history of the state has extensive coverage of the city's politics, culture and economy.

Cultural Themes

• Berglund, Barbara (2007). Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846–1906.
• Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (1980). Literary San Francisco: A Pictorial History from its Beginnings to the Present Day. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-250325-1. OCLC 6683688.
• Maupin, Armistead (1978). Tales of the City. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-096404-7. OCLC 29847673.
• Sinclair, Mick (2003). San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History.

Earthquake, Infrastructure & Environment

• Bronson, William (2006). The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned. Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-0-8118-5047-6. OCLC 65223734.
• Cassady, Stephen (1987). Spanning the Gate. Square Books. ISBN 978-0-916290-36-8. OCLC 15229396.
• Davies, Andrea Rees (2011). Saving San Francisco: Relief and Recovery after the 1906 Disaster.
• Dillon, Richard H. (1998). High Steel: Building the Bridges Across San Francisco Bay. Celestial Arts (Reissue edition). ISBN 978-0-88029-428-7. OCLC 22719465.
• Dreyfus, Philip J. (2009). Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco.
• Franklin, Philip (2006). The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself.
• Thomas, Gordon; Witts, Max Morgan (1971). The San Francisco Earthquake. Stein and Day. ISBN 978-0-8128-1360-9. OCLC 154735.

Ethnicity, Religion & Race

• Broussard, Albert S. (1994). Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954.
• Burchell, R. A. (1980). The San Francisco Irish, 1848–1880.
• Chen, Yong (2002). Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community.
• Cordova, Cary (2017). The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco.
• Daniels, Douglas Henry (1980). Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco. University of California Press.
• Garibaldi, Rayna; Hooper, Bernadette C. (2008). Catholics of San Francisco.
• Gribble, Richard (2006). An Archbishop for the People: The Life of Edward J. Hanna. The Catholic archbishop (1915–1935).
• Kim, Jae Yeon. "Racism is not enough: Minority coalition building in San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver." Studies in American Political Development 34.2 (2020): 195-215. online
• Rosenbaum, Fred (2011). Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Yung, Judy (1995). Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco.

Gold Rush & Early Days

• Hittell, John S. (1878). A History of the City of San Francisco and incidentally of the State of California.
• Lotchin, Roger W. (1997). San Francisco, 1846–1856: From Hamlet to City. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-06631-3. OCLC 35650934.
• Richards, Rand (2008). Mud, Blood, and Gold: San Francisco in 1849.
• Taniguchi, Nancy J. Dirty Deeds: Land, Violence, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee (2016) excerpt

Politics

• Agee, Christopher Lowen (2014). The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950–1972.
• Bean, Walton (1967). Boss Rueff's San Francisco: The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution.
• Carlsson, Chris; Elliott, LisaRuth (2011). Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968–1978.
• DeLeon, Richard E. (1992). Left Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco, 1975–1991.
• Ethington, Philip J. (2001). The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850–1900.
• Hartman, Chester (2002). City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-08605-0. OCLC 48579085.
• Holli, Melvin G., and Jones, Peter d'A., eds. Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820-1980 (Greenwood Press, 1981) short scholarly biographies each of the city's mayors 1820 to 1980. online; see index at p. 410 for list.
• Howell, Ocean (2015). Making the Mission: Planning and Ethnicity in the Mission. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Kahn, Judd (1979). Imperial San Francisco: Politics and Planning in an American City, 1897–1906. University of Nebraska Press.
• Issel, William (2013). Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in Twentieth-Century San Francisco. Temple University Press.
• Kazin, Michael (1988). Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era.
• Saxton, Alexander (1965). "San Francisco labor and the populist and progressive insurgencies". Pacific Historical Review. 34 (4): 421–438. doi:10.2307/3636353. JSTOR 3636353.

Social & Ethnic

• Asbury, Hubert (1989). The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. Dorset Press. ISBN 978-0-88029-428-7. OCLC 22719465.
• Lotchin, Roger W. (2003). The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego.
• McDonald, Terrence J. (1987). The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socioeconomic Change and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860–1906.