Evanescent Cities is a photographic exploration of the neighborhoods of Long Island City, Queens and Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These neighborhoods have undergone a massive shift over the last few decades as New York City becomes more prosperous. At the same time, the cities evolution away from industrial landscapes towards a newer, more sterile version of itself has sacrificed a certain amount of diversity not to mention charm. In these depopulated landscapes photographer Patrick O'Hare seeks to document, and comment upon, the ever-shifting relationship between New York's neighborhoods and the people they contain.

Outside of his native France, Serge Gainsbourg has been portrayed as the one-hit wonder lothario of Je t'aime... or a washed-up self-parody drunkenly uttering obscenities on talk-shows. These hopelessly restrictive views are increasingly being replaced by an awareness of how visionary a musician and lyricist he was. Reassessing his legacy, it's clear that Gainsbourg was an eclectic, protean figure; a Dadaist, poete maudit, Pop-Artist, composer, holy fool, libertine and anti-hero. An icon and iconoclast. Here was an artist so far ahead of his time it seems we're only now catching up. Central to any appraisal of his work is arguably his masterpiece Histoire de Melody Nelson, an album suite combining many of his signature themes; sexual taboos, provocation, humour, exoticism and ultimately tragedy. The score, arranged with Jean-Claude Vannier, of lush cinematic strings and proto-hip hop beats combined with Serge's spoken-word poetry, has become remarkably influential across a wide musical spectrum inspiring soundtracks, indie groups and electronic artists.In recent years, the album's reputation has grown from cult status to that of a modern classic with the likes of Beck, Arcade Fire, Air and Pulp paying tribute. How did the son of poor Jewish immigrants, hounded during the Nazi occupation, rise to fame, notoriety and acclaim, being celebrated by President Francois Mitterand as our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire? How did the early chanson singer evolve into a musical innovator incorporating world music, samples, breakbeats and dub into his music decades ahead of the curve? And what were the roots and legacy of a concept album about a Rolls Royce, red-haired Lolita muse, otherworldly mansions, plane crashes and Cargo Cults?

For as long as humans have gathered in cities, those cities have had their shining--or shadowy--counterparts. Imaginary cities, potential cities, future cities, perfect cities. It is as if the city itself, its inescapable gritty reality and elbow-to-elbow nature, demands we call into being some alternative, yearned-for better place. This book is about those cities. It's neither a history of grand plans nor a literary exploration of the utopian impulse, but rather something different, hybrid, idiosyncratic. It's a magpie's book, full of characters and incidents and ideas drawn from cities real and imagined around the globe and throughout history. Thomas More's allegorical island shares space with Soviet mega-planning; Marco Polo links up with James Joyce's meticulously imagined Dublin; the medieval land of Cockaigne meets the hopeful future of Star Trek. With Darran Anderson as our guide, we find common themes and recurring dreams, tied to the seemingly ineluctable problems of our actual cities, of poverty and exclusion and waste and destruction. And that's where Imaginary Cities becomes more than a mere--if ecstatically entertaining--intellectual exercise: for, as Anderson says, "If a city can be imagined into being, it can be re-imagined." Every architect, philosopher, artist, writer, planner, or citizen who dreams up an imaginary city offers lessons for our real ones; harnessing those flights of hopeful fancy can help us improve the streets where we live. Though it shares DNA with books as disparate as Calvino's Invisible Cities and Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities, there's no other book quite like Imaginary Cities. After reading it, you'll walk the streets of your city--real or imagined--with fresh eyes.

'Astonishing... A marvellous poetic reminder that every place is a universe of magical possibility to the perceptive mind' Damian Le Bas, author of The Stopping Places A smuggler and a deserter, Darran Anderson's grandfathers skirted the Second World War on the fringes of legality. His father survived the height of the political violence in Northern Ireland and Darran himself came of age during the final years of the Troubles before leaving his hometown to find a way to exist in the world. But when another young man in his family disappears, Darran is brought back to Derry. Walking the banks of the River Foyle, he starts on a search for what has been lost. A portrait of a city, a biography of a family, a record of the objects that make up a life, Inventory offers a vital new perspective on a troubled history.