This Pivot book examines literary elements of urban topography that have animated Alan Moore, Peter Ackroyd, and Iain Sinclair’s respective representations of London-ness. Ann Tso argues these authors write London “psychogeographically” to deconstruct popular visions of London with colonial and neoliberal undertones. Moore’s psychogeography consists of bird’s-eye views that reveal the brute force threatening to unravel Londonscape from within; Ackroyd’s aims to detect London sensuously, since every new awareness recalls an otherworldly London; Sinclair’s conjures up a narrative consciousness made erratic by London’s disunified landscape. Drawing together the dystopian, the phenomenological, and the postcolonial, Tso explores how these texts characterize “London-ness” as estranging.

In this book, Catharina Löffler traces the psycho-physical experiences of London walkers in eighteenth-century literature. For this purpose, readings of fascinating, exciting, comical and sometimes disturbing texts grant insights into a culturally, historically and socially significant time in the history of London and make this book a tour of London as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of fictional eighteenth-century urban walkers. Uniting concepts of literary theory, urban studies and psychogeography, Löffler approaches a cross-generic range of literary texts that design uniquely subjective visions and versions of the city. A journey through the fictions and factions of eighteenth-century London, this book provides a compelling read for anyone interested in the history and literature of the English capital.

The term "psychogeography" is used to illustrate a bewildering array of ideas, from ley lines and the occult to urban walking and political radicalism—where does it come from and what exactly does it mean? Psychogeography is the point where psychology and geography meet in assessing the emotional and behavioral impact of urban space. The relationship between a city and its inhabitants is measured firstly through an imaginative and literary response, secondly on foot through walking the city. This creates a tradition of the writer as walker and has both a literary and a political component. This guide examines the origins of psychogeography in the Situationist Movement of the 1950s, exploring the theoretical background and its political applications as well as the work of early practitioners such as Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem. Elsewhere, psychogeographic ideas continue to find retrospective validation in much earlier traditions from the visionary writing of William Blake and Thomas De Quincey to the rise of the flâneur on the streets of 19th century Paris and on through the avant-garde experimentation of the Surrealists. These precursors are discussed here alongside their modern counterparts, for today these ideas hold greater currency than ever through the popularity of writers and filmmakers such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, Stewart Home and Patrick Keiller. This guide offers both an explanation and definition of the terms involved, an analysis of the key figures and their work, and practical information on psychogeographical groups and organizations.

Provocateurs Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces in this post-millennial meditation on the vexed relationship between psyche and place in a globalised world, bringing together for the first time the very best of their 'Psychogeography' columns for the Independent. The introduction, 'Walking to New York', is both a prelude to the verbal and visual essays that make up this extraordinary collaboration, and a revealing exploration of the split in Self's Jewish-American-British psyche and its relationship to the political geography of the post-9/11 world. Ranging from the Scottish Highlands to Istanbul and from Morocco to Ohio, Will Self's engaging and disturbing vision is perfectly counter-pointed by Ralph Steadman's edgy and beautiful artwork.

Cyclogeography is about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and also a portrait of London as seen from the saddle. In the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Jon Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city. Informed by several grinding years spent as a bicycle courier, he lifts the lid on the solitary life of the courier. Traveling the unmapped byways, shortcuts, and urban edgelands, couriers are the declining, invisible workforce of the city. The parcels they deliver keep things running. For those who survive the crushing toughness of the job, the bicycle can become what holds them together.

Library of Science Book Club selection Discover magazine “What to Read” selection “A really great book.” —IRA FLATOW, Science Friday “One of the finest science writers I’ve ever read.” —Los Angeles Times “Ellard has a knack for distilling obscure scientific theories into practical wisdom.” —New York Times Book Review “[Ellard] mak[es] even the most mundane entomological experiment or exegesis of psychological geekspeak feel fresh and fascinating.” —NPR “Colin Ellard is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the neuroscience of urban design. Here he offers an entirely new way to understand our cities—and ourselves.” —CHARLES MONTGOMERY, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design Our surroundings can powerfully affect our thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, whether we’re awed by the Grand Canyon or Hagia Sophia, panicked in a crowded room, soothed by a walk in the park, or tempted in casinos and shopping malls. In Places of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and nature—places we escape to and can’t escape from—have influenced us throughout history, and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space. As he describes the insight he and other scientists have gained from new technologies, he assesses the influence these technologies will have on our evolving environment and asks what kind of world we are, and should be, creating. Colin Ellard is the author of You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall. A cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario.