I’d recommend Cool Gray City of Love to any new San Francisco transplants: it’s a perfect, intimate portrait of a city that Kamiya simply loves. For me, it quietly encouraged me to love the city, too. Reading this gives an extra layer of intrigue to so many everyday elements of life in San Francisco.
If you want a taste, Western Addition: A Basic History was republished in Found SF. Most of the chapters are a similar length, and only loosely interconnected - so it’s an ideal read if you only have 15 or 20 minutes at a time.