"Dedicated to all those living elsewhere who would rather be in Tucson"

"Tucson" is the first comprehensive history of a unique corner of America, a city with its roots in Indian and Spanish colonial history; its skies broken by the towers of a Sunbelt metropolis.

In these pages C. L. Sonnichsen, dean of southwestern historians-and a Tucsonan by adoptionchronicles with humor and affection the growth over two centuries of one of the region's most colorful communities.

Today's metropolitan Tucson is a city of half a million people. Set along the Santa Cruz River in the Lower Sonoran...