Walter Benjamin. 
 
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Harvard University Press: 1999. Quarto. Hardcover with a dust jacket. First edition. Rubbing to the top edge of the boards and to the inside of the rear board. A few spots to the edges of the text block. Unclipped jacket is a little edge worn and the rear flap is creased. Book and jacket are both very good.
 
"This work - comparable, in method, to the process of splitting the atom - liberates the enormous energies of history that are bound up in the 'once upon a time' of classical historiography. The history that showed things 'as they really were' was the strongest narcotic of the century.
Arcades are structures in which we relive, as in a dream, the life of our parents and grandpartents, as the embryo in the womb relives the lives of animals. Existence in these spaces flows then without accent, like the events in dreams. Flanerie is the rhythmics of this slumber."