Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory

“Fascinating reading, this is a profound, original, and timely book about the world’s current obsession with the past, as well as the form which this obsession has taken: memory. Huyssen considers what our obsession with memory means, and examines a number of material forms that it has taken, as well as the social, cultural, and aesthetic functions they have served.” —Kaja Silverman, University of California, Berkeley

This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas—Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York.

Andreas Huyssen is Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His most recent book is Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia.