This is the first comprehensive introduction to Benjamin's unfinished "Arcades Project" - one of the most significant cultural documents of the Weimar Republic and Nazi era. Walter Benjamin's unfinished "Arcades Project" has had a remarkable impact on present-day cultural theory, urban studies, cultural studies and literary interpretation. Originally designed as a panoramic study chronicling the rise and decline of the Parisian shopping arcades, Benjamin's work combines imaginative peregrinations through the changing city-scape of nineteenth-century Paris with passages that read like a blueprint for a new cultural theory of modernity. "Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project" provides the first comprehensive introduction to this extraordinary work accessible to English-language readers. The diverse range of issues explored include the fl and No. 226; neur, the physiognomy of ruins, the dialectical image, and modernity and architecture. The contributors include: Susan Buck-Morss, Stanley Cavell, Brigid Doherty, Stathis Gourgouris, Barbara Johnson, Esther Leslie, Gerhard Richter, Beatrice Hanssen, Detlef Mertins, Elissa Marder, Tyrus Miller, Max Pensky, and Irving Wohlfarth.