This book has its origins in the paths I walked across the open space between the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station and the Staatsbibliothek in the winter of 1992, during a year I spent in Berlin as a part of my doctoral studies.I did not possess a camera at the time, so I do not possess what would now be a rich repository of photographs of that strange, liminal wasteland in the middle of the former divided city.Of course, I can always search Flickr.Ten years later I returned to Berlin on a scholarship from the Berlin Parliament (the Studienstiftung des Abgeordnetenhauses von Berlin), to begin work on a tentative project on the ruins of Berlin.Potsdamer Platz was certainly different, but more crucial was the renewing of the intellectual friendships I had made during that first visit, as I sought to think through some of the conundrums with which the cityscape confronted me.More than another ten years on, and thanks