First, I quite enjoyed this book, and enjoyed it even more on a re-read.
gmw has several excellent points, which I might get around to addressing later, but for the moment I want to focus on what to some is a bit of a sidetrack -- Treasure Island.
Treasure Island, to anyone who has lived in the SFBay area, is a toxic, radioactive, U.S. Navy dump site. So seeing what it was back in 1939, just before it got closed down and completely taken over by the Navy, was a revelation. And The Gayway? Too funny a name, given both the context of the story, and the changes to San Francisco since. The Wikipedia article on the
Golden Gate International Exposition is worth a quick read, as are some of the cited references. I'm indebted to Ms. Klages for opening my eyes to something that I lived next to for 20 years and never knew much about.