“The maps put me in mind of those wonderfully decorated books of the early Twentieth Century, which incorporated those foldout extravaganzas of cartography. Whilst those maps were setting out uncharted geography, Solnit’s maps go further, mapping the dreams and imaginations of some of the liveliest characters this city has been home to. And on the book goes, digging into the the lost and often secret history of the city by the bay.”—Eric Jacobs Beat Scene Magazine
“A brilliant new book.”—Randy Shaw Beyondchron
“This nicely designed book offers a collection of essays and subject specific maps anyone who loves San Francisco will enjoy poring over.”—Bob Walch Bookloons.com
“Maps are, without a doubt, a helpful means for navigating a city—unless, of course, you’re looking for something other than direction. In her book Infinite City, writer and activist Rebecca Solnit charts more than thoroughfares and bicycle routes. She tackles the social cartography of San Francisco in a series of maps that make visible the city’s hidden mysteries and rich history. Her field guide beautifully juxtaposes famous landmarks and invisible cultural phenomena, essentially drawing social connections between the city’s ecology and its neighborhood stories.”—Kristina Loring Design Mind
“The maps . . . are Gibbonian in outlook and are to your basic atlas as Michelangelo is to ceiling painting.”—Richard West Everett Potter’s Travel Report
“As an exercise in creative mapping, Infinite City is a gem. (And we remain steadfast that it should be required reading for tourists, who might otherwise wander into the Stud bar thinking it's a BBQ joint.) The maps show that cartography can do more than chart places and visualize data; it can cut to a city’s very soul.”—Suzanne Labarre Fast Company
“In Infinite City: An Atlas of San Francisco, Rebecca Solnit synthesizes cultural and critical geographic inquiry into a readable, accessible, and visually stimulating collection of maps and narratives about one of the nation’s most diverse metropolitan areas. She admits that the work is a love poem and celebration of a city she adores, but she is also quick to peel away the layers and expose the dark contradictions and flaws in her city. This makes Infinite City both a romantic valentine and a candid, critical introspection.”—Jason Henderson Geographical Review
“Solnit's brilliant and super-cool reinvention of the traditional atlas.”—Good Times
“An amazing collaboration among artists, cartographers, geographers, activists, historians, gadflies, ecologists, photographers, and a law scholar, all collected together by Solnit to pursue her belief that ‘every place deserves an atlas.’ So it does, and Solnit's collective has come up with one for San Francisco that is simply stunning—though at least as much for the essays that accompany the maps as for the maps themselves. Infinite City is place description at its fullest and most important.”—Don Mitchell H-Net Reviews
“At their very best Solnit's maps rise to the level of cartographic literature. . . . With academic wit and an explorer's eye, Solnit teases out the interplay of forces that have guided the city's cycles of growth and destruction, development and decay.”—Jeremy Miller High Country News
“Smart and creative and perhaps even revolutionary. You'll never see San Francisco the same way again.”—Dean Rader Huffington Post
“A many-layered treat for any San Franciscan who thinks she knows her city.”—Danielle Sommer KQED
“Places exist in our minds, perhaps more vividly than they might in the moments we physically pass through them. Our understanding of a place— and how we might emotionally map it—is informed by what we bring to it;our past, present, future; expectations, hopes and disappointments color the legend. It's this symbiosis—the relationship between memory, imagination, anticipation and reality—that Rebecca Solnit's captivating, deeply evocative collection of re-imagined maps and essays, "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas," expertly charts.”—Lynell George Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A gem that has 22 fantastic maps and an eloquent essay that follows each one.”—Noe Valley Voice
“A unique atlas of a unique city. Solnit’s book . . . sees San Francisco in amazing new ways.”—Oc Metro Business (Newport Beach, Ca)
"Fabulous re-imagining of a traditional atlas features 22 colorful maps and related text that describes the city through a series of unique themes. Very cool."—Allen Pierleoni and Hut Landon Sacramento Bee
“Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City, the SF intellectual's cartographic wonderpiece of Bay Area history and emotion, swept a large part of the Guardian staff off our feet, so pleased were we by its 22 out-of-the-box renderings of the hills and valleys we work and play on. . . . Solnit's book, which features deeply researched essays to accompany each map, showed us new roads toward understanding the Bay Area.”—San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Solnit takes us on a tour that will change the way we think about place. Breathtakingly original, with its seemingly unlimited landmarks and treasures, this atlas of the imagination invites us to search out layers of the city that carry meaning for us.”—San Francisco Bay Guardian
“A handsome collection of thought-provoking and delightful maps that show us many takes on a city that’s hidden before our eyes.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Evocative and multilayered. . . . This is a book to savor.”—Elaine Merrill San Francisco Examiner
“If you are a lover of maps, of San Francisco, or both, the experience of Infinite City is worth having.”—Laura Tarwater-Scharp San Francisco Examiner
“A thought inducing collection of maps that will challenge your view of what atlases can be.”—Kevin Winter San Francisco/Sacramento/Portland Book Rev
“A whole new kind of atlas, one with inventive maps and well-researched text that makes unexpected connections, and thereby rewrites the history and reshapes the character of this famous city and the surrounding area. . . . Solnit has expanded the definition of what a book can be and how a story can be told in a mesmerizing, revolutionary new way.”—Tina Baine Santa Cruz Sentinel
“A treasure of intricate, intimate maps.”—Adam Hartzell SF360
“When a reader starts exploring this original and beautifully illustrated ‘personal atlas’ about San Francisco, the magic and endless possibilities of an atlas that reaches beyond streets and landmarks is revealed. . . . The possibilities are endless. Infinite City offers a new way of thinking about any location. Readers will be inspired to create their own atlases of the cafes, music venues, street markets, historical and racial landmarks, iconic trees, statues, bird groups in their own towns or cities. The book provides a template for a way to rethink the world around you.”—Bruce Elder Sydney Morning Herald
“Aided by artists, writers, and cartographers, Solnit examines San Francisco’s many layers of meaning.”—The Bookseller
“An extraordinary work . . . Since 1990 Solnit has published 12 books, dissimilar in mode but united by her argumentative fire and her elegance as a stylist. There is no one quite like her at work in this country, and I wish there were.”—Robert Macfarlane The Guardian
“Rebecca Solnit’s new, collaborative book about a widely beloved place, San Francisco, stirs nostalgia for fogged beaches, the smell of eucalyptus and freeways crowded with vintage VWs.”—Carly Berwick The Next American City
“A collection of essays and subject-specific maps anyone who loves San Francisco will enjoy pouring over.”—Bob Walch Watsonville Register-Pajaronian
"Rebecca Solnit begins to unveil unexpected worlds in [San Francisco] by the creative act of combining elements that before are perceived as operating merely separately or even aspects working to the disadvantage of another: from cities of parts to whole, differently powerful entities."—Books of the Southwest
"A gorgeously published book . . . After you have finished savoring this book, which deserves to be read slowly and thoughtfully, you feel like you have been living for decades in San Francisco."—Murray Browne The Book Shopper
"Gorgeous and infinitely fascinating . . . A treasure,"—Sherry Wright Kissing the Eart
"At last a field book with the sense of San Francisco—the non sense, the real sense, the mysteries of the microclimates, gays and butterflies, gangs, boulevards and mysterious alleys. All here!"—Michael McClure
"Downright near infinite, at any rate, the good fortune of a city blessed with such antic chroniclers as Rebecca Solnit, First Citizen of the Imagination, and her entire splendid crew. There's one map missing, though, from this marvelous little volume: the MRI of any reader lucky enough to wander into its myriad graven precincts—synapses firing, dendrites scintillating away, a whole mad happy carnival of fresh neuronal associations."—Lawrence Weschler, author of
Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences "Solnit's writing is born of intense reverie and deep reading, passionate inquiry and political defiance; she is a lyric questor for the texture of everyday life, and she attends to places and to their variety and particularity with an exhilarating form of attention that illuminates and transforms her subjects.
Infinite City is a marvellous atlas, a new approach to history-making and storytelling; it's also a highly original praise song to many San Franciscos, a multi-layered and polyphonic testament, alert to the play of detail and to the grand design, to the shadows of memory that fall, the restless shifts in the urban scene and the vital energy of overlooked subjectivities."—Marina Warner
Play audio
