A scathing, lively and timely look at the "European city", from one of our most provocative voices on culture and architecture today (Owen Jones)

The best book I've read on Europe, blending history, architecture and contemporary politics and written in Owen Hatherley's trademark mixture of scepticism, erudition and humanity. He is a writer of lasting merit who will be read fifty years from now. (Anna Minton)

The latest heir to Ruskin. (Boyd Tonkin Independent)

Owen Hatherley writes regularly on aesthetics and politics for the Architectural Review, The Calvert Journal, Dezeen, the Guardian, Jacobin and the London Review of Books. He is the author of several books, most recently Landscapes of Communism, The Ministry of Nostalgia and The Chaplin Machine.