The San Francisco Bay Area was a meeting point for radical politics and counterculture in the 1960s. But until now there has been little understanding of what made political culture in this area unique. This work explores the development of a regional culture of radicalism in the Bay Area, one that underpinned both political protest and the counterculture. Ashbolt argues that geography played a key role the development of radicalism in the region. His study makes an important contribution to the history of radical politics and offers a new way of looking at America in this period.