This book explores the visual transformation of the contemporary European city, focusing on the most emblematic and visibly wounded of all European cities - Berlin.Taking as its subject the "e;intricately assembled, relentlessly disassembling metropolitan screen"e;, it charts the virulent implosions of culture, the distortions and violence that give city-living its fractured and hallucinatory quality.Provocatively written as a series of inter-locking poetic fragments, the text evokes the formation of metropolitan "e;identity"e; as it ricochets between the physical surface of the city and the vulnerable but manipulating consciousness of city dwellers.Barber has discovered a powerful new vocabulary - a vocabulary charged with the visual and sonic impact of the cinema. Like the city, the text pulsates, creatively chaotic, raw and exhilarating.