An inventor living at the beginning of the Enlightenment keeps journals reflecting on everything from his inventive lovemaking to his discovery of the first binary code, caffeine stimulation, the insanity defense, and the memory of birds. First published in 1996 to international acclaim, Eric Darton's Free City is the fictional journal of L., a seventeenth-century inventor caught in a precarious love triangle, even as his beloved northern European port town teeters on the brink of catastrophe. In a tale laced with bawdy humor and elements of the fantastical, L. must balance the demands of his patron-a rapacious entrepreneur-against those of his sorceress lover. As L. attempts to avert calamity, he finds himself joined by the most unlikely of allies. Weaving together historical, political and absurdist elements, Free City resonates more profoundly today than ever.

When the World Trade Center was erected at the Hudson River's edge, it forever changed the character of the American city. In "Divided We Stand," cultural critic Eric Darton chronicles the life of this billion-dollar building, using it as a lens through which to view the broader twentieth-century trend toward urbanized, global culture. Drawing on political and social history, Darton pioneers a new hybrid genre of architectural biography, revealing the convergence of four volatile elements in contemporary urban life: super tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism.

Now with a new introduction and afterword, Divided We Stand remains the definitive work on the birth and life of the World Trade Center.