Curious about the images of the city that have been evolving in the different social sciences, we did what academics often do in such a situa 1 tion: we set up a seminar on "Images of the City in the Social Sciences." From the start, we counted on the help of specialists in other fields to pursue their interests. Of the persons who agreed to participate, all but two came from the United States, and their analyses, in the main, reflect the experience of Western countries and the United States. In our formal instructions to our collaborators, we took fi>r granted that a variety of images of the city could be found or inferred in their fields of expertise. We asked them to identify these images and their functions, to explain how and why they have changed over time, and to relate these images to the distinct intellectual traditions and techniques-analytical or otherwise-in their respective fields. The definition of image was left to the judgment of the participants.

A “well crafted . . . fascinating” story of a London architect’s struggle for identity in love and career (Time Out). This is the city in which everything is simultaneous. There is no yesterday, nor tomorrow, merely weather, and decay, and construction. In London’s changing heartland, architect Matthew Halland can’t help but contemplate how the past and the present blend. It stirs memories of his boyhood, the early years with his daughter, and the failed marriage he has not yet put behind him. Here, too, is the London of prehistory, of Georgian elegance, of the Blitz. But at the same time, Matthew must keep focused on the constructing of a new future for London—his latest project in Docklands—and with it he begins to forge new beginnings of his own. City of the Mind is the “lucid and complex, meditative and playful, concise and expansive” second novel from the Man Booker Prize–winning author (The Washington Post Book World).