San Francisco's history, politics, and culture here receive fresh appraisals: Popular resistance to the corporate agenda, waterfront labor struggles that reshaped the City and set the stage for economic globalization, the need to preserve the library (and the book) as a public resource, the dynamics of Presidio redevelopment, the gay leather scene, the role of tycoons in imperial city building, and the new Civic Center as a symbolic emblem.<P>Here too are the stories of artists, writers, and neighborhood activists who have contributed to San Francisco's self-awareness and have been vital to the growth of organic communities in Chinatown, the Tenderloin, Manilatown, the Fillmore, the Mission, and North Beach.