Robert W. Cherny Knihy

The Coit Tower murals, created in 1934 under the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, showcase the work of twenty-five master artists, many influenced by Diego Rivera. While the murals elevated the careers of artists like Victor Arnautoff and sparked national debates due to their Communist symbols, they evolved into a cherished San Francisco landmark. Robert Cherny's account features sixty full-color photographs and critiques the murals' reception over time, exploring their cultural significance and the ongoing controversies surrounding New Deal art.

The author, a professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University, has an extensive background in American politics, having published five notable books on the subject. His expertise provides a rich context for understanding the complexities of the political landscape in the United States.

Founded in 1919, the Communist Party (CP) in San Francisco survived an ineffectual early period to become a force in the trade union heyday of the 1930s. Robert Cherny uses the lives and careers of more than fifty members to tell the story of the city's CP from its founding through 1958. Cherny draws on FBI files, the records of the CP at the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History, interviews, and memoirs to follow male and female party and union leaders, rank-and-file members, and others. His history reveals why people joined the CP while charting the frequent changes in policy, constant member turnover, and disruptive factionalism that limited party aims and successes. Cherny also follows his subjects through their resignations, expulsions, or other reasons for departure and looks at the CP's influence on their lives in subsequent years. Vivid and exhaustively researched, San Francisco Reds is a long view account of the personal motivations and activism of an Old Left generation in a West Coast city.