2015 marked the centennial of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, when host city San Francisco emerged from the ashes of earthquake and fire as a center of the young century’s progress and possibilities.

San Francisco’s Jewel City takes us on a richly illustrated tour of this world’s fair, recreating the Beaux-Arts palaces, towering spires, lush courtyards, raucous "Joy Zone," and thrilling displays of culture and industry taken in by nineteen million attendees. Along the way, we meet famous (and infamous) visitors, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, and Buffalo Bill Cody. We see the array of wonders for ourselves—including life-changing electrical appliances, a world tour of twenty-one international pavilions, luminous radium crystals, and a five-acre model of the Panama Canal — and in them we recognize the beginnings of our own technological era.

Guiding us through this spectacle, from planning and construction to its demolition just ten months after the gates opened: historian Laura A. Ackley, whose text is as compelling as it is unparalleled in its depth of knowledge.