Davidson's The San Francisco Renaissance is as close to a 'definitive' study as I can imagine. Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash
Davidson offers an excellently conceived synthesis of literary criticism and cultural history and analysis. Choice
Lucid, nuanced, informed, this is a model literary history of the literary and social formation of interlocking 'bohemias' (Rexroth circle of the 1940s, the Beats, Spicer circle, Snyderian neo-primitives, the Duncan group) as equally at ease with interpretive and theoretical debate as with the choice and framing of telling incident, example, analysis. Rachel Blau duPlessis, Sulfur
Michael Davidson's The San Francisco Renaissance illuminates and traces this movement by identifying its major writers, who were intent on severing the shackles that they believed were encumbering postwar America...Davidson is impeccably thorough in his presentation.... John Aeillo, San Franciso Examiner
Michael Davidson's book, The San Francisco Renaissance, is long overdue. Phil Woods, The Bloomsbury Review
Davidson is a superior critic well acquainted with the scene and the authors. His focus on community helps to make sense of the diverse groups in close interaction with one another in that time and place without sacrificing anything in the sharpness and clarity of his discussion of individual authors....The scope is wider than the literary movements discussed and superior to books that apply a single theory to heterogeneous texts. Davidson employs a number of current theories, choosing that approach which best illuminates the text at hand yet maintains a clear unity among the various strands of his subject. The resulting book is an important work for all readers concerned with contemporary literature and literary theory. George F. Wedge, American Studies
